You’ll enjoy reading this easy DIY princess dress up braid tutorial today. It’s sweet and simple and most of all: fool proof. Get all of your yarn out and you and your children can spend the afternoon making all the princess hair your little one ever wanted!

How we made our Princess Hair

Let me talk you through and show you how we made a princess Anna braid. It’s very easy, all you need is some yarn, a hair band and scissors.

My daughter loved helping me: choosing colours and giving me ‘recommendations’ along the way. Such a fun activity to do together!

Here’s how to get started:

– choose your colour, any kind of yarn you think suits your princess of choice best, will be fine

– take as much yarn as you need, I measured 2x an arm’s length

– stick the yarn through your hair band and fold in half so the hair band is in the middle

– start braiding

– I made sure the braid was nice and firm (hoping it will add to the lifespan)

– when making a princess Anna braid, be mindful of where and how much of the white strands will show (I’m sure your children will give you detailed instructions!)

– when you get to the end, tie a couple of strands around the braid and make a knot

– make a few knots while you’re at it, so you’re sure it won’t come loose

– trim any excess yarn if necessary

A Princess Dress Up Braid for Everyone

When finished, tie it in your child’s pony tail. Since my little girl has long hair, that’s easy. In case your children have short hair you could use a T-shirt as wig (like we used to do in the 80’s, remember?) and tie the braid to the fake pony tail. Works perfectly!

My daughter was overly excited. She has been asking about Anna hair for a long time. We have been playing the CD on repeat (again) all week. Our Frozen enthusiasm seems to come in waves and will undoubtedly reach new heights when we get to watch the second movie.

While we were playing around with our yarn, we made a little Frozen hair clip. I used a few strands of white and blue, simply slid the hair clip through the middle so the yarn would fold in half and tied a knot. Easy peasy.

Now every time Elsa gets her super powers out, we have to put a hair clip with “Frozen hair” in. Since I’m pretty bald (I recently shaved my head for the Child Cancer Foundation) my daughter got very frustrated with me and demanded I put one of my old hair bands on so I could “play properly”. Preschoolers, they always make me laugh!

Of course we didn’t just stop after making princess Anna’s braid. My daughter quickly realised that we could use this technique to make a braid for just about any princess we know!

So we did.

Here’s our interpretation of Anna, Rapunzel, Belle, Ariel, Pocahontas or Jasmine and Elsa looks like. (Note that we had to use a greyish brown since we’d run out of the perfect shade of brown for Belle’s hair.)

We decided to braid them all to make them easier to use. I’m slightly worried that loose yarn will easily entangle but you could totally give it a try if your children would prefer the hair to be loose. I’m guessing older children will love the freedom to play around with the hair more.

Needless to say our activity turned out to be a big success. My daughter spent all afternoon trying out all the hair, singing along to all the songs and convincing her younger brother to slay the dragon and rescue her from her castle. He got as far as to get out the play horse. Toddlers!

Join the Dress Up Fun

Most kids love to dress up. Some children would wear their capes or princess dresses everyday if they could get away with it (my boy is one of them!). I remember loving to play with my mother’s old clothes and shoes and nowadays my children love using our random collection of shawls, sheets and blankets for all sorts of creations.

Adding some handmade dress up accessories to your dress up box is a great way to mix things up a bit. Our braids are a week old and in that time have been used as hair, as a tail, served as a snake, doorbell, crown and a leash (true story!). Their creative little minds will come up with all sorts of things!

Feel free to have a look at our other dramatic play ideas or browse through all of our fun imaginative play ideas like the small worlds we made or our loose parts activities.

Have fun!

Ann*

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