Dryad or Wood Elf Hair Accessory

I have seen those rave hair extensions and I had seen a few that were "viking" themed, and so I decided I wanted to make one for myself. Green is my favorite color, and I love elves and fairies, so the theme of a wood elf or dryad seemed obvious to me. This makes a fun hair piece that isn't your everyday, run-of-the-mill, found at the store hair accessory, and people are sure to notice and ask where you got it. (You can tell them it is an original. ;)

1. A round form (mine is an old wire napkin ring)
2. Beads, shells (with holes in them), charms, any random bits of things you want in your hair piece. Since I am doing a wood elf/dryad theme, I went with natural greens, browns, and shell bits.
3. Yarn or thread in colors of choice (once again, I am using greens and browns). The thickness of your string (yarn, embroidery floss, whatever) will determine the thickness of your braid pieces. I used a variety of thicknesses for a more thrown together, nature appearance.
4. A Darning Needle or any type of needle with a large eye.
5. Tape or any other way to hold down the ends of threads while you braid them together
6. Mod Podge for fastening some knots (optional)
7. Hair stick or a short chopstick (or a pencil in a pinch)

My base is an old wire napkin ring. It is pretty much just a ring of wire that has been wound together. You could use wood, wire, or even tough plastic.

I take my fattest yarn in a moss green shade and tie it to the wire ring. I double knot it to make sure it stays well. Then I begin to wrap the wire around the ring, in and out, to cover all the metal. I keep doing this until I run out of thread. Then I switched to brown yarn, but you could obviously use the same color. I just thought that it would give it more of a rustic, tree look.

When I cover the whole ring, I take my darning needle and thread the tail bit of my yarn on it. Then I stick it under the already wrapped yarn on the ring and pull it through. I do this several times to hold the thread tail in place. You can double back on yourself if you have enough thread and that will give you added security.

So I tried to go into the basics of a braid here, but I understand if you want to look up a different diagram. Cool for you if you already know how to braid.

I take a long length (I did about two feet, but I could have got by with one and a half - length of your thread will depend on how long you want your extensions to be) of embroidery thread and tie the ends together with a smaller piece. Then I taped it down to my work station. I only did this for film purposes, it was much easier for me to hold the knotted end in my mouth and braid that way, but obviously that wouldn't do for photos.

*Leave a bit of extra thread at the top of the knot! You will need it for tying the project together!

Separate the threads into three strands. I have three tiny strands together to make one strand, so I technically have nine threads here. But I make only three for the braid.

Spread them apart, 1, 2, 3. Take #3 and cross it over #2. It is now the middle thread. Take #1 and cross it over #3 (the new middle thread). #1 now becomes the middle thread. Now your line up is #3, #1, #2.

Now #2 crosses over #1 to become the new middle thread. (Line up: #3, #2, #1). #3 then crosses over #2 to become the new middle thread (Lineup: #2, #3, #1).

The idea here is that the outside threads alternate crossing over the middle thread to become the new middle thread. Hopefully my photos make more sense than my number explanation.

Continue to do this as far as you want, and then you will add a bead (charm, rock, whatever).

I am starting with this faux bone bead.

I have braided down about 2 inches of my thread. I thread my darning needle with one of my three strands of embroidery thread, and then I thread the bead on it, pulling the thread through the bead until the bead is on the thread. I carefully pull the thread end out, locking the bead onto the thread.

Then I just continue braiding. You may want to kind of hold the bead with your thumb to make sure that your braid goes under your bead and traps the bead there. It will try to slip away from you! Once you have made your first braid stitch (over, over twice) you will have trapped the bead. Just take it slow and you will get it.

I had a few pre-done wire wrapped beads, and they are super easy to add. Just thread the thread through the loop of the wire and then keep braiding. Very simple. It will kind of dangle outside of the braid instead of becoming part of it like the previous bead.

I am finishing almost all of my braids with this lovely shells that already have holes in them. All I do is thread through the hole in the shell and then double or triple or quadruple knot the thread. Then the shell is stuck there. I added a bit of mod podge to my knots for added security, but you don't have to. Then I just snipped the excess thread off.

And that is the first braid! You can make as many as you want, but I would recommend at least five for the best effect. You can decorate them any way you want, but the more random your bead placement the better. It will look so much more natural and attractive to the eye. Of course, you can use anything that you can thread on the braids. Some of those hair beads would be cool, but I didn't have any.

Additional Ideas for Braids:

1. Tie random knots in your braids. This looks so rustic.
2. Intertwine two different colors of thread.
3. Splice in a different color of thread for interest. This is simple, just take a bit of the new color and tie it to one of the braid arms of the main braid and then add it to that arm. Continue braiding and the new color will appear.
4. 3. Leave a few braids with really long tail ends. I did this to my big brown braid. I just tied off the braid much shorter than the others, and then I trimmed the extra thread to match the length of the previous ones, leaving a very long, loose tail.
5. Fuzz out the yarn ends for some of the braids using a slicker brush. This is really cool looking. Just brush the yarn ends until they fuzz as much as you want. (You will lose some yarn hair, but go easy and you will still have a good tail)
6. Try different styles of braids (four strand, chain braid, etc.) I did this on some of mine, but it was on ones with embroidery thread, which were thin and small enough that it didn't really show, but it definitely would with thicker threads.

I finished up with six braids. To attach them to the wire ring base, I started with the braid that would be the middle. I wrapped it and any extra thread there was on the ends around the wire base, and then I tied it off.

I didn't leave any extra on the brown one (ooops), so I had to use the extra thread from the first green braid to tightly wrap the brown one to the ring.

Continue to do this with all of the braids. Basically it is the same process as what we didn't originally, but we are leaving the braid hanging as a very long tail end.

To finish off, I took a small piece of brown yarn and tied it to the wire ring. Then I wrapped it tightly over the wire ring, making sure to go over all the wrappings of the attached braids. Finally when I was sure that my braids were trapped to the wire ring, I took my needle, threaded the brown yarn, and then threaded it under the wrapped threads, making sure to double back on myself several times. When I had gone all the way around the ring doing this, I tied off the end to an extra bit sticking out. Then I put mod podge on the knot and snipped off the excess.

Finished! Your hair piece is ready to use!

So, to use this piece, you will need a hair stick or a chopstick. You can use a normal length chopstick, but I recommend cutting off some of the excess length.

To style, gather a top part of your hair into a tight ponytail. For those with thinner hair, they may want to just go ahead and ponytail it off with a rubber band or ponytail holder, but I don't have to do that.

Grip the ponytail in one hand and lay the wire ring over the base of said ponytail. Grip that in your hand as well, leaving one hand free and the gripping hand holding both the hair and the wire ring.

Take your hair stick and push it inside the ring and through the hair at a sideways angle, and then lever it to a 90 degree angle from your head. The stick should be over top of the ring and going down into the hair.

Push on the stick, levering it down flat again as you push it under the hair and toward the other side of the ring, straight across from where you first put the stick in.

When you reach the other side of the ring, give the stick a slight upward angle, causing the end to emerge from under the hair and then push it overtop of the other side of the ring. It should resemble a lynch pin. The stick should go over the sides of the wire ring and under the hair, trapping the hair and successfully holding the accessory in place.

If my explanation makes no sense, look up hairstyles with hair sticks, especially Japanese hair sticks. They are whizzes at using them and it will make so much sense.

I wore this accessory all day while going about doing normal stuff, and I did not have a problem with weight or tangling. I was surprised about the not tangling part because I figured it would. My hair is pretty bad about getting in a mess. I did have some compliments on it, and hopefully you will, too, if you follow this tutorial and make your own accessory. Thank you for reading and have a great day.