You can totally DIY a Hair Wrap!
Remember school holidays as a kid? When your parents let you do all the fun stuff like colour hair, flouro nail polish and hair wraps all before school went back?
Now you can bring a little bit of that nostalgia back with your kids by wrapping each other’s hair – holidays or not! The lovely Gemma, local hair-wrapper extraordinaire has shown us how.
Gemma’s step-by-step guide to creating a Hair Wrap
- Gather materials. You’ll need yarn, wool, twine or string, some scissors, a large clip and a separating comb.
- Cut yarn into 30-40cm lengths of approximately 30-40cm.
- Using comb, separate a small section of hair – about 2cm by 2cm – from a few centimetres behind the ear.
- Use the clip to hold the rest of the hair out of the way of the sectioned off hair.
- Plait the sectioned off hair.
- Take two to three pieces of the cut string. We’re going to start wrapping from the top of the plait about 1cm from the head.
- Keeping the strings pulled tight, wrap all pieces around the plait once again.
- Wrap all pieces around for a third time and now separate just ONE of the strings and hold the remaining two strings in the hand with the plait.
- Wrap the single string around the plait and the other strings several times keeping it tight. Be sure to not leave any gaps of hair in your wrap (Hair will come out later and the wrap won’t be as strong)
Switching colours
Take one of the remaining two colours you’ve been holding with the plait replace it with the string you’ve been leading with. The new string is now your leading string. (You can also have two leading strings to create a pattern)
Adding new strings
We can add new colours in by holding a new string up to the wrap and wrapping around it to secure it using the leading string to tuck it all in (The new colour can now be used as the leader string if wanted)
- Continue wrapping until the end of the hair and then knot it off. To knot it off we just take the leader string and one more string of similar size and wrap it around all the strings and knot it at the bottom.
- Trim off excess string … And we’re done!
How to do the awesome Criss-cross pattern
Instead of wrapping down on your wrap as you’ve been doing you can go back up using a criss-cross technique. Spiral upwards (over the top of already wrapped string) diagonally all one way and then back down the opposite way.
Gemma’s tips for best results:
- Make sure to be keep the wrap nice and tight. A loose wrap won’t work
- You can change colours as little or as often as you like. All wraps are unique
- You can use different thicknesses of wool
It can also be helpful to start with well brushed straight hair. You may like these hair straightening brushes too!
