How to Give an American Girl Doll a Temporary Afro

This tutorial outlines how to achieve a kinky-curly natural hairstyle on an American Girl (or any other 18") doll. Our method does not involve permanently altering the doll's hair in any way. Although the hairstyle is temporary, I promise all it takes is styling one time and it can be worn again and again. And the idea for doing so all came from my 6-year-old and her creative little brain.

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Cornrowed Shamrock Hairstyle Created with Scorpion Hearts #StPatricksDay

Yes. I went a bit overboard with this year's St. Patricks Day hairstyle (especially as compared to last year's style). The only real excuse I have is that my daughter is on Spring Break for the next two weeks *gasp* and, well, we have a ton of time. We also didn't have to worry about the "excessive" nature of the hairstyle as far as her school uniform policy goes, so we both wanted to do something funky and fun. I'm not normally a fan of scorpion hearts, but I think they work perfectly when creating the shamrock.

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Quick and Easy Flat and Box Twists #NaturalHair #Hairstyle

Yet another school-friendly quick and easy hairstyle for this week, which can be done with either twists or braids, whichever work best for your child's hair. In addition, we're hoping to get a super cute twist-out from this style, too, so it's sort of a two-for-one hairstyle.

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Quick and Easy Double Twisted Crown Up-Do #Hairstyle

Usually after we have a protective hairstyle in for a while I like to give my daughter's scalp a rest by doing either free hair or something really loose. Unfortunately, her school has been battling lice this past week so my goal with this hairstyle was to keep her hair up, well-oiled, and hopefully free from catching the little critters. Yes, kinky-curly hair can get lice, you can read all about that here. All of that being said, this hairstyle was a really quick and easy compromise. It took only 1/2 hour to complete and should get us easily through the week.

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Third Annual Valentine's Day Natural Hairstyle Parade: Part 2

Here it is, Part 2 of our Valentine's Day hairstyle parade with another 16 photos! If you missed Part 1, be sure to check it out here if you somehow missed the other fantastic hairstyles featured in that post!



Featured above is:

Child's first initial: Nannie (nickname)

Age: 9 years old

Mama: Marina W.

About the hairstyle: Style name...Valentines Delight (named by my husband!). I copied 2 styles from CHVC and merged into one. Very cute mature style for a girl coming out of that baby hair style age but not too mature for her young age.

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Third Annual Valentine's Day Natural Hairstyle Parade: Part 1

Looks like this year was just as big a success as last year! Once again, we've received so many photos that I'm going to be dividing them up into two days, otherwise they would take forever to load!  This has been so much fun for us, and my daughter's "crown of hearts" hairstyle that we did last week is getting so many compliments she wants to leave it in for the whole month! No doubt the cuties submitted for our hair parade will be getting just as much (if not more) attention with their adorableness.



I would like to thank everyone who submitted photos and for making this year's parade yet another success. The first half of the photos are posted below, and the remaining photos in Part 2 are posted here.



Featured above is:

Child's first initial: M.

Age:4 years old, almost 5

Mama: Angela H.

About the hairstyle: Simple style that took less than an hour. Love making her friends smile when they see the heart in her hair!

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Valentine's Day Halo of Hearts Hairstyle Tutorial #NaturalHair

We're pleased to present our entry into our Third Annual Valentine's Day Natural Hair Parade! Next week is Spirit Week at my daughter's school, so we had to do something that would work with the different activities they had going on. I was mostly thinking about "Fifties Day" and making sure that she had a hairstyle that would look something like a ponytail to go with her outfit. She's really happy with how the hairstyle turned out; I got a "Very classy, Mama!" from her, so that makes it a winner in my book, too!

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Valentine's Day Natural Hairstyle Parade 2014: Submit Your Photos!

It's the first day of February and, although my daughter's new school does not celebrate Valentine's Day, we're still going to be doing a fun hairstyle this year and we're hoping that all of you will join us once again! For the past few years, our readers have submitted photos of hairstyles inspired by Valentine's Day to share on the blog. In fact, last year we received so many pictures we had to break them up into two posts! This year will be our Third Annual Valentine's Hairstyle Parade and we'd like it to be our most successful ever!

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Adding Yarn to Flat Rope Twists Video & Tips #NaturalHair

As I mentioned in my previous hairstyle post, I've finally managed to get a video together than incorporates the technique used to add yarn to flat rope twists. I highly recommend that you watch through our flat rope twist how-to video along with our yarn extensions video tutorial, if you're not already well-acquainted with those two techniques. This video covers how to combine them to work yarn into flat rope twists.

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Versatile Yarn Flat Rope Twists Protective Up-Do #Hairstyle #NaturalHair

It is absolutely NOT necessary to use yarn to achieve this hairstyle, so if you like it and don't know how to add yarn to flat rope twists and/or cornrows, you can still do this. We chose to add yarn for a few reasons, not the least of which was to make a video on how to do so, as so many of you have asked me for a tutorial. Below are the step-by-step instructions for the hairstyle, and the video for adding yarn to flat rope twists can be found here.

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Natural Hair Styling for your Child's American Girl Doll: Yarn Extensions

My daughter has been wanting an American Girl doll for the entire year. It was the only thing she asked for for Christmas. She only gets one present, so she made it easy for me this year. Or so I thought. I had been tossing around the idea of adding an American Girl hairstyle feature on the blog since she first mentioned she wanted one. I've styled doll's hair before, so I knew what I was going to be getting myself into. Still, having ordered the doll a month in advance and styling a bit every day, I still found myself up until the wee hours of Christmas morning finishing this look. I think it was somewhere around 3:30am when I finally finished the extensions. I didn't style the hair until later that day, after I finished my daughter's hair.

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Triangle-Part Yarn Extensions Tutorial and Style Options #NaturalHair #Hairstyle

If ever there was a hairstyle that incorporates a ton of other stuff we've already blogged about, this is it. Seriously, I think I've covered quite a few different techniques in this one, so if you're interested challenging your skills and know-how, this will likely do it. We have yarn twist extensions, flat rope twists, piggyback rope twists, and triangle parts, not to mention knowing how to cornrow (for the style shown above). Yep. I'm super happy with style and it's going to offer us all sorts of flexibility for the next month, especially when it comes to styling for Christmas. If you have questions about why and/or how we use yarn, or need any additional information on yarn extensions (including the pros and cons of doing them), we've got a slew of posts covering them.

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Cornrows Braided Toward the Hairline: Protective Hairstyle #NaturalHair

I was asked by @NoviceGem via Twitter who asked what inspires the hairstyles that I do. I thought it was a great questions that I will likely address in a longer post sometime. However, for this particular style I wanted to revisit something I had done in the past, (the X-pattern cornrows, something I did when she was really small) but work it into a more protective hairstyle that did not include the use of ponytails (as my original style had). I also knew that I wanted the hair to go down toward the hairline instead of pulling away from it and that I wanted it to last 2 or 3 weeks. In my head I thought about how to work the smaller rows into the larger ones, and this how it turned out! It worked pretty much how I expected it to.

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Twisted Bangs with Flat Twists Into Bun #NaturalHair #Hairstyle

I have plans to set some yarn twists toward the end of this month, so over the next few weekends we're just going to be doing quick hairstyles that will last about a week, perfect for the school year and those times when we don't want to invest a whole lot of time on hair. This hairstyle took less than an hour to complete and really only requires basic twisting skills. You can do braids and cornrows, instead, of those are easier for you and/or work better on your child's hair.

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7 Tips for Setting Twists for a Well-Defined Twist-Out #NaturalHair #Video

Do twist-outs have to have awesome definition to be "good?" No way! Some twist-outs are done specifically to show off "big hair." However, there are some times when people want that really well-defined look of a crisp twist-out. In fact, we used this method to set my daughter's hair for her Halloween costume this year (you can see the final results here). This post covers the steps we go through to achieve that a more defined-looking twist-out. By no means am I implying that one look is any "better" than another, but this post does highlight the flexibility in styling that comes with kinky-curly hair and one of the ways to style it to achieve a particular effect, when that effect is the one desired.

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Fringe Haircuts for Girls

Haircuts for Girl