first week of school and hair accessories roundup

With my daughter Cyan starting school for the first time, I decided to document this first week, with a photo of her each morning, all ready for school; and I crafted a hair accessory for her each evening, utilising my lovely stash of green (our school colour) ribbons, all from the fabulous craftyribbons.com..


Click the title for each day to read the full post, with tutorials for each hair accessory..

Monday.. interchangeable bows for hair clips..



Tuesday.. ribbon hair bun covers..



Wednesday.. hair ribbon streamers..



Thursday.. ribbon covered hair clips with buttons..



Friday.. embellished hair bands..



Well Cyan certainly enjoyed her first week at school, and big brother Oliver had a good week too (once he got over the cough he was suffering with earlier in the week), he is now in Year 3 which is his first junior year.. so exciting times for both my kids!

We are all worn out (especially me, I won’t be writing daily blog posts again for a while!) and looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend.. we are off to our local museum tomorrow for a Japanese themed family craft event – making card samurai swords and helmets – that should be fun!

Sharing at the fabulous link parties on my sidebar, go check them out..

fifth day at school and embellished hair bands

The last day of Cyan’s first week at school..

Cyan’s favourite things about school this first week:
seeing her old friends and meeting all the new children, playing with ‘threading toy’, playing with ‘funny animals toy’ (sounds like construction toy to make funny mixed up animals using body parts of all different animals), counting up to 100 (which she demonstrated effortlessly for me on the way home today).



It didn’t surprise me that from the hair clips I made last night she picked the velvet ribbon and star button pair to wear today (they were my favourites too)..

I was trying to think of another different hair accessory I could make tonight, then I remembered we had a couple of hair bands saved for school, in green and white of course, which I could decorate with some more of my school ribbon stash.. so Friday’s hair accessory is..

Hair bands embellished with bows and flowers

You will need:
Ribbons
Buttons
Hair bands
Hot glue gun
Needle and thread
Sharp scissors



I made a bow to go on the green spot hair band, using 3 different ribbons, sewn together in the middle..



Then fixed to the hair band with a little hot glue and a few stitches around the band..



Get the hot glue out again to fix another ribbon around the middle of the bow..



A medley of polka dots..



For the white band I made some simple rosette flowers.. to make these you need a length of ribbon about 4-6" long, hand-sew a running stitch along one long edge (didn’t photograph this stage), pull thread to create the rosette shape, tie thread off to secure, then sew button in the centre.



Work out arrangement so they sit nicely next to each other on the band..



Attach flowers with hot glue..



And now we have two much prettier hair bands for Cyan to wear..

third day of school and hair ribbon streamers

The next installment of Cyan showing off her school uniform..

Grey tunic dress paired with a white blouse with cute flower embroidery on the collar (the blouse is another of my mum’s charity shop finds)..



You can see her hair in buns with the bun covers I made last night, which almost worked.. they were just a little too small to stay put :(



Onto today’s hair accessory, this is the most simple hair accessory to make with ribbon, we have made them before with various different colours and lengths of ribbon.. so Wednesday’s hair accessory is..

Hair ribbon streamers

You will need
Assortment of lovely ribbons
Hair elastics
Sharp scissors



Cut lengths of ribbon.. for these I used 6" lengths..
(I didn’t end up using the grosgrain polka dots in the above picture, they don’t hang right, the organza and lighter weight ribbons work best)

Tie each ribbon tightly onto the hair elastic, and pull into shape.. done!



Seriously these are so easy, and little girls love them.. I kept these fairly short for school.. I have made them before with much longer lengths, so they are like proper streamers, and Cyan called them ‘princess hair ribbons’!

second day of school and hair bun covers

Second day of school for Cyan.. Oliver unfortunately is trying to kick a cough, he was just well enough for his first day back yesterday, but the day took it’s toll and he was up coughing in the night again so he’s been at home with Daddy today.. (How is it they have a 6-week summer holiday and Oli manages to get a cough the week before school starts?!)



Cyan’s first day went really well yesterday, sounds like she had a lot of fun; and she is so excited about making new friends – and catching up with her old friends who went to the same pre-school. She came down the stairs this morning from brushing her teeth at 8am saying “I’m ready, can I go to school now?” (We live very close to the school and don't normally leave until 8:30-8:40!)

Today Cyan chose to wear her proper ‘big girl’ ensemble of grey skirt, white blouse and tie! She was most insistent that she wanted to wear her tie today, and is loving the fact that I am letting her choose a different uniform outfit each day this week! (Usually I like to get a few days wear out of clothes to reduce my laundry commitments! And yes, this does sometimes cause arguments..)



With the green cardigan.. This cardigan is labelled as age 3-4 and is still too big for Cyan, she’s not even so dinky anymore after this summer’s growth spurt, and she just turned 5! The cardigan stayed on just long enough for me to snap a photo, Cyan is a warm child, doesn’t like wearing extra layers (except for princess dresses/cloaks and the like!) and she won’t really need to wear it until the weather gets a lot colder.

And the hair accessory craft of the day.. I was thinking.. what other (practical) styles could we do with Cyan’s hair, apart from the obvious plaits, pigtails, ponytail etc.? I thought it might be fun to put her hair in two little buns, but her hair is quite fine and thin, and very slippy so it won't stay in a bun without a bun cover (like the crochet ones you wear for ballet)..

I don’t crochet, so for Tuesday we’re going to make..

Ribbon hair bun covers

You will need
Organza ribbon and/or lace type trim



Before you start you will need to put your girl’s hair roughly in a bun and work out the length of ribbons you will need.. With Cyan’s hair in two buns, the length I needed to fit across one bun was approx 3.5". Add 2" for casing allowance. I cut 2 x 5.5" lengths of polka dot organza ribbon (from my school colours ribbon collection) and 1 x 5.5" length of this cute cotton lace type trim which I found in my stash.. I used 3 lengths for each small bun cover, for a single bun cover or if your girl’s hair is thicker than Cyan’s you will probably want 4 lengths or more..



Fold the ends and sew to make the casing for the ribbon tie, check your pieces will end up the right length before sewing..

Then sew the lengths together in the middle.



Thread ribbon tie through the casings..



Tie in a bow to secure onto bun.



Quite simple really, although it took a bit of trial and error to find a method which (I hope) works..



the next morning: Here are the bun covers in action, they do work in principle, unfortunately my measurements were a little on the small side (either that or Cyan’s hair grew thicker overnight!), so they don’t quite stay put.. Another inch on the lengths I used would probably fix this.. whether it’s worth remaking them I don’t know.. or perhaps I’ll just ask my mum if she would crochet some for Cyan ;)

What do you think?



Brushing up on her alphabet before school this morning.. Thank you Aunty Arwen for the alphabet jigsaw puzzle birthday card ;) You can see the ribbon bow hair clips she picked to wear from those I made last night..

first day of school and hair bow tutorial

It was our first day back at school today.. first day ever for Cyan!



The school colour is green, which I love..

I had bought hair clips, and a whole selection of lovely ribbons in green and white.. gingham, striped, polka dots, organza..
The ribbons are all from craftyribbons.com



I am planning to craft a hair accessory each night this week, to go with Cyan’s uniform..

Tonight I decided to add some bows to the hair clips.. so on Monday we have..

Simple interchangeable bows for hair clips tutorial

You will need:
Assortment of lovely ribbons (see above!)
Hair clips
Fray-check or craft glue
Sharp scissors

Take a length of ribbon, about 8" worked out well with the 10mm ribbon..

(For wider ribbon you would need a slightly longer length, for narrow ribbon slightly shorter.)



Snap the hair clip onto the centre of the ribbon length..



Tie in a knot, twice, pulling tight each time, this means the bows can slip on and off the clips later..



Tie bows, according to this method for simple bows on the crafty ribbons blog.. keep adjusting and pulling tighter until bows look the right size and shape, then trim the ends with sharp scissors..



I fray-checked the ends and also added a dab of glue under the bow knot, top and bottom..



I made five pairs of bows with different ribbons..



They can all be swapped onto different clips..



They turned out so cute and they are really so simple to make  – I think I may have to do more in non-school colours, I have a HUGE stash of ribbons and Cyan has LOADS of hair clips which we could slip bows onto..

Why don’t you make some really simple interchangeable hair clip bows..





After all the comments on the uniform, I added this photo crop where you can see the detail on this dress more clearly – it really is a lovely one (click photos to enlarge). Gingham dresses in the school colour are standard summer uniform for girls here, you can buy them from a variety of retailers and the style does vary a lot. This particular dress is one my mum picked up in a charity shop a couple of years back and we’ve been saving it for when Cyan started school.

mini bag, notebooks and other yummy gifts

I made more mini notebooks last week, as a little thank you gift for Oliver’s teacher and teaching assistants. They are the same as the crafty ribbons mini notebooks I made, in that they have perforated pages and are stitch-bound; the covers are a little different in style – I wanted them to be personal, and I thought rather than Oliver drawing cards for his teachers I could use his drawings as the cover of the notebooks, they will be reminded of him every time they write a note! He wrote a little thank you to each teacher on the first page of their notebook.



Oliver drew some lovely little birds (he loves birds). He drew a blue-tit, a cockatiel and a robin. I added polka-dot fabric behind his drawings, which was fixed onto the card cover with bondaweb, then the drawings were trimmed to fit and stuck in place with double-sided tape, then I machine-stitched around the edges. We also bought some yummy dark chocolate mint truffles (we can testify to the yumminess as we shared a box at home too!) and used a green (school colour) gingham ribbon to tie each notebook with the choc box.



I also made another little bag like the crafty ribbons mini beach bag I made, this one was a birthday gift for one of Cyan’s friends. We gave her a play dough ice cream set (a bargain buy – I bought a few to use for gifts over the summer) so I used the ice-cream Fun in the Sun ribbon I had from the Crafty Ribbons challenge. Cyan made another of her cute little bracelets – it has become a habit making bracelets for her friends birthdays.



I was going to make another mini ribbon notebook to match.. but time was short.. and I remembered we had some mini princess colouring books left over which I made to go in party bags for Cyan’s birthday last year. They were covered with cute scrapbook prints and the cupcake one went nicely with the ice-cream bag!