“It’s all fairies that hits the clock”, as we would literally say in Belgium, meaning that we eat, sleep and breathe fairies nowadays.

One afternoon my 4 year old daughter and I made these cute little fairy braids, which were inspired by our princess hair.

These fairy braids are easy to make, even easier to use and can be any colour (or fairy) you like!

Let me show you how we made ours and I’m sure you’ll want to make some for yourself too!

How to Make Fairy Hair Braids for Pretend Play

Here’s what you’ll need:

• hair clips
• felt
• needle (eye big enough to thread embroidery floss)
• scissors
• yarn
• embroidery floss
• glue gun

{If you don’t have a glue gun yet, I highly recommend getting one! I waited for such a long time before buying one and looking back I don’t know how I ever managed without. It’s SO handy!}

Getting started:

We chose our colours and cut off about an arm and a half length (make sense?) of each colour. I then folded it in half and slid the hair clip over it.

I clipped the hair clip onto a piece a fabric which was tied around my leg to hold it in place and started braiding.

When you braid you can choose to separate the colours or mix them randomly, whichever you want. The outcome will be very different, so it pays to quickly try out both to you see what you like best.

Braiding the wool is pretty straight forward. I made sure the length of the braid sort of matched the length of my daughter’s hair. But we also made one that was much much longer which was a big success too.

When you are done braiding, you can simply tie a knot and cut off the wool wherever you think is best. For some we cut it off straight after the knot and for others we left a longer yarn tassel at the end.

We decided to make something to cover up the hair clip. I cut some leftover pieces of felt and stitched them together. I used colours that matched the yarn and I improvised the embroidery patterns.

When ready I glued the felt onto the hair clip: easy!

And this is the final result of our first fairy braid. My daughter said this was the spring fairy’s braid: blue because it still rains a lot in spring time, green for the grass to play on and orange for the flowers that will start to grow again. I added a little bit of yellow embroidery as a symbol for the first warm sunshine!

Making your own Fairy Braids

The most fun part of this activity is playing around with different colour combinations and styles.

My daughter loved this part just as much as I did. She kept coming up with ideas and since this is such a quick and easy craft, I happily obliged!

Here’s our winter fairy hair braid. Perfect for some Frozen pretend play too. (No, we still haven’t entirely moved on from Frozen yet!)

And our ‘heart love’ fairy braid. She insists on calling all heart shapes ‘heart loves’. It’s adorable. Only pink and purple colours allowed.

And this maybe a more random colour combination for a fairy named Jasmin. Or so the rumour goes. Anyway, I think it’s the prettiest!

Encouraging Pretend Play

Our fairy braids have already had multiple uses. I love that about children’s imagination: the ability to use objects in total random ways, just because.

Having little props in the dress up box is a great way to encourage pretend play in children!

And I believe that involving children in the making of these little crafts, helps them stretch those creative muscles.

On top of all that, it’s also just plain old good fun and a great way to spend some quality time with your little ones.

If you enjoyed reading this, you might also want to have a look at the mini felt sleeping bags we made for our figurines and our rainbow button necklace, which is the cutest little necklace ever!

If you happen to be looking for more dramatic play inspiration, you can find some great pretend play ideas here. Or if you’re keen to make some more diy toys, here‘s a cool little collection to keep you busy for a while.

Thanks again for stopping by today!

Ann*

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