Crazy Hair Day - This Time With a Mermaid
Last year for Crazy Hair Day Ada wanted a mermaid in her hair. After much thinking this is what I came up with! It involves a plastic mermaid toy, floral wire to help keep it in place, ponytail ties for both the mermaid and the hair, along with some hair clips to help keep it all in place and provide mermaid friends for the mermaid toy. It also involves simple braids and a bit of French braiding.
The previous year, for Crazy Hair Day, Ada requested a dinosaur in her hair which led to me building a scaffold for it out of floral wire, researching hair dye to turn her hair into a grassy field, and copious amounts of ponytail ties to keep it all in place. She ended up loving it, but it was heavy and I needed to remove it the second she got out of school. During that day; however, she noticed one of her friends’ mermaid styled hair. It was done amazingly with the upper half of a Barbie doll as the mermaid top, a French braid as the tail, and hair chalk or temporary dye to color it all. She loved it and thus when Crazy Hair Day came around the next year she requested a mermaid too. Luckily, she had her own idea, picked a mermaid from her toys, and I talked over my ideas with her on how we could attach it to her the morning of. This is what we came up with:
With the dinosaur having succeeded last year I decided to use floral wire to accomplish this again. I started with cutting two long pieces and folding over the ends into loops so they wouldn’t hurt her head by mistake. I then looped the center of one of the wires around the mermaid’s armpits and then the other above the tail bend. Unlike the dinosaur the wire didn’t stay in place and moved up and down a bit. To help keep it immobile I grabbed some of the ponytail ties and looped it around several times. I ended up with a purple and blue wrapped mermaid with floral wire sticking out but it was ready to go for the next morning.
The morning of Crazy Hair Day I had Ada hold the mermaid on her head so it stayed in place while I attached it to her head. I started by grabbing a small section of her hair, right by the one wire, and sectioned it into three parts with the wire joining one of those sections. I then braided the hair along with the wire and, once done, wrapped it around the mermaid. That helped keep the mermaid attached to Ada’s head and the wire helped keep it in place too. I then repeated this process with each of the wires. By the time the wires were hidden the mermaid was secured and all that was left to do was make it look nicer and stop the tail from twisting to the side.
To do this I decided to take the remaining hair and French braid over top of the mermaid to keep it straight. Once I got to the end of the tail, before the fin, I stopped the French braid, split the rest of the hair down the center, and created two French braids to finish up the rest of the hair. I then went back and added two mermaid clips to either side of the toy mermaid giving her friends to swim with and confirming it would hold.
Ada absolutely loved it and was proud to show it off. We were currently doing school through her laptop so it was more for Ada to tell people about than them getting a close up look which may have been for the best. I can’t exactly remember but I think it may have been more comfortable than the previous year as she kept it in for longer.
Has this post helped you come up with something for your own Crazy Hair Day. If so I’d love to hear what you did (will do) and how it helped so feel free to share in the comments below. I hope your week is going great.
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