Hi all! I have been driving myself crazy trying to figure out how to create blingo cards that get saved as an electronic file, one file each, so that i can email them out. No bingo card creator is designed to get emailed out one file at a time.

SOOOOOO then I thought HEY! wouldn't putting hair-empowering words on a grid (in place of bingo numbers) be a GREAT project for kids? Even kids too young to read or write can help mom put snips of paper of words on the grid with paste or whatnot. And you can teach them Hairiffic words to boot!

So this is how we will start BLINGO and see how it goes. Make sure you have Yahoo Instant Msngr 8.1 or 9 or the mac version.

Then we will do a conference chat.

Email me at play_blingo@yahoo.com then i'll send out the word list, then you make your cards and email me a photo back of the card (maybe with your wee one smiling at his handiwork) then before the date and time of the game, make sure to buy a game with the paypal button on the site (yet to be created) and I'll get the weekly list, and we'll play in the chat room!!! I'll verify the winner against the list. I don't see a reason you cannot reuse the blingo card.

I suppose there might be a chance of having dual winners. Either they will split the prize or I might do 2 prizes, depending.

for now I don't think the volume will be so large we have to worry about it.

This should be really fun!

PRIZE WILL BE SNAPAHOLICS DOLLARS! THE MORE THAT PLAY THE MORE I PAY!

Please email me at play_blingo@yahoo.com well before this weekend for the word list.

Steph

Ok it's not officially Friday anymore, but I'm going to do my hairku anyway! Hairkus were started by a mom on our Yahoo Haircare Group as a way to celebrate our kids hair and how much we love to do it. I am going to make this a feature of Snapaholics also when I get the site redesigned.

Here goes my first Hairku:

My hair sings: Chick Chack!
Chicka Chack! A symphony
Braids and snaps bouncing

So the big hair news is, those teeny weeny braids you see there (some as small as dental floss) are going to become LOCS! Yes I am locking G's hair. Her hair has grown SO much in the back, it's really amazing. It was a lot shorter than the top when she first got home. Her bangs are really long too. I expect the braids to fill in girth-wise as the locs form, so soon she'll have pretty long hair!!! I am excited to see how it shapes up. Right now those snaps she has in are very clickety clackety and very swingy, since the braids are so small. She likes it!

The snaps you see are the Cherie Style. They have a very nice ringtone.

And for those of you unfamiliar with locs, YES you do wash the hair like normal ok?!?!

Announcing monthly Snapaholics USA raffles! Each month it will be different stuff, drawing will be held the last day of the month. You can enter as many times as you like.

All money from raffles will go towards my future trips to bring my daughter back to visit Haiti! Plus, I help the orphanage she lived in, so it's a good cause!

Go to the Snapaholics home page or snaps page to buy raffle tickets. A dollar each or five for 4 bucks.

and before that it was again a rainbow (her favorite)

So, we will be taking a break from these after this. That said, she absolutely LOVES the yarn. And it is SO versatile. For those of you who say "my GOD, it's so gaudy! Doesn't she get teased?" The answer is no she doesn't, her chums love it, and, being 5 years old, she is still in that "more is better" stage. She loves it and when your 5 year old feels like this....

who can argue with that?

Be careful, because if your daughter sees these Over The Top ponytails on the website, especially the Ariel one, she'll probably beg you to make one. The word "gaudy" is not in a 4 or 5-year-old's vocabulary. They are so easy to take out and put back in, though, that if it's not practical for her to wear it to school or anything, make her one to wear at home!

Bascally, Yarn Ponytails take these steps:

1. Cut long strands of yarn, about 60 or more. you will be folding these in half and attaching the ponytail to the head at the fold.

2. Braid them all....I do 6 strands per braid. Twisting is also an option and I quite like the results.

3. Fix the ends up with beads and snaps, or just knot them off. I leave long tails, and I vary the length of the braids/twists.

4. Gather together at the fold, adjust how you want them to hang, trim the ends so they are neat and you like the looks of them.

5. Do your daughter's hair how you want it, and make a bump (an un-pulled-through puff) at the back.

6. Wrap a ballie around the bump AND the folded over yarn.

7. Hide the bump and where you attached it with a scrunchie or even a large clip barrete (like the one I have at the top of the Ariel ponytail)

The great thing about this is that you can create the ponytail at your leisure, and once you have the hairstyle in, it just takes a minute to add the yarn ponytail. They are reusable, just clean them in a sink of soapy water.

Instructions for how to make these really easy ponytails are available in video format here on my website. On this page of videos you will also find a brand new wonderful video by Katie on how to do yarn extensions. Yarn is TONS easier to work with than synthetic or human hair (last time I used synthetic kanekalon hair it was absolutely ALL over the place when i was done. A mess. Plus, it's too "slick" for me to work with easily. Yarn clings better to the kinky hair and doesn't slip around as much).

You will also find other how-to videos by Katie and Najahface.  Here is a fab photo of the finished yarn extensions on Katie's daughter:

Happy Yarning!!!

Mama Snap

I think they look better and neater braided part way down like this. I could have used more beads and just knotted them underneath. This was faster. I recommend, if you want to use snaps with them, not to braid more than 6 strands of yarn, or the snap won't close around them.

Happy Snapping!

Steph

So yes, it's over the top. But once the ends are trimmed and she's outside walking around, it looks totally darling. I just used pink and purple fancy yarn, and plain black yarn. How I ended up with yarn falls instead of yarn extensions, which is what I was supposed to be doing, is that I just started too late and ran out of time. Fixing the piggyback braids took awhile, but putting one purple or pink tone bead on each piggyback came out really cute, then I just ran out of extra time! So I just did the piggybacks up into a little puff, except I didn't pull the hair all the way thru the elastic on the last turn, so it was like a little lump, then took the yarn, folded it in half, added an elastic to it, wrapped it around the lump, turned it so that the yarn fell over the top of the lump, took some strands (4 or 5), wrapped them around the lump 2 or 3 times, and tucked the tail under, and just let it hang!!!! She LOVES them. Little girls all over town were staring and I could see them drooling trying to figure out how they could get all that pink and purple into their hair LOL

I will soon be carrying extension hair in fun colors so that Snapaholics customers can achieve what our Aussie Snap Kelly did to her daughter's hair in Australia:

So, yarn falls are technically G's first Goth hairstyle. Now she just needs fishnets, black lipstick, and a bustier....NOT!

Happy Snapping!

Stephanie
Mama Snap

Here was my first attempt at putting in extensions. Boy oh boy. This was tough. I need MUCH more practice! And there are some things I don't understand exactly, such as how to END the real hair without having it fuzz out of the braid. But luckily, I have no shortage of bling to cover up any and all imperfections! Of course SHE loved it, as she had a clickity clackity head full of pink and purple. You can only go over the top with their little heads for so long before they want to look like Beyonce, so do it while you can!!!

The trick that I didn't know about was that when you lay the extension over the real hair to start, you are supposed to give the fake hair one TWIST before you start braiding. Some of mine were kind of slidey. After a week or so some of the extensions were totally sliding out, they were real loose. Styles don't last super long on G anyway, but these had to come out sooner than I had wanted. But she enjoyed them for the time being! I need my neighbor to show me close up exactly how to do these.

So, I am back to my old friend, the puff. Puffs look great on G, as her head loves that extra height you get from puffs. They are easy to fix when they get mussed up, they are fun to bling up, and they are just less time consuming. Since she gets fuzzy quickly, I find that as much as i love lots of little box braids, or doing crazy parts, it's just too much time involved to take them down after 2 weeks or less and then put them up again. I think she has a lot of new growth still coming in. I am going to stick with easier styles until it all gets longer.

My fingers felt like fat ole sausages, because she does not have dense thick hair, but I did it nonetheless. I had to stop and let her have free hair in the back. She would have had to watch about 3 more movies for me to cornrow all of it. LOL

It has lasted really well, actually, I'm very pleased. I think this next time I'll gel it up better and do fatter rows. And combing out free hair every morning isn't the funnest, so I'll probably do something to the back too.

I certainly have enough bling to distract the eye from the less than perfect rows! Shown here are the orange sheen bow barrettes and halloween beads.

Mama's learning!

PINK COMBO HAIR SNAPS!!

CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?
I have been whining to my supplier for a long time about them discontinuing the "Valentine's Day" Heart mix of Hot Pink, Light Pink, and White. Maybe the head honchos in China got the clue and decided to go pink again. Because THAT is what little girls want!

These new snaps should be here within the next couple of weeks.

In other news, we will soon implement a "give a gift" program on the website, so you can shop for your favorite person and have the gift delivered in a logo bag with a little gift card and ribbon attached. Look for this in the very near future, before October is over!

Don't forget to get your Happy Halloween beads, and good early bird pricing on all Christmas Mixes.

This blog entry is for the Snapaholic Novice. If you are saying, "What ARE these things called hair snaps? What can they do for me, and are they worth it to get addicted ?" then you need to read this!

See the little girl in the photo at left? She has the most amazing doodads in her hair, securing the ends of her braids. They are virtually impossible to find in any retail store or hair care aisle. They are called HAIR SNAPS! Not much bigger than your pinky nail or a nickel, they are THE cutest, most convenient way to secure the ends of braids or twists, or quickly add some color and decoration to the hair. Their other purpose is to hold beads on the braids. In the photo below, there are small black flower snaps (style #3) with a tiny jewel in the center holding on all those butterflies and pony beads! There is no unsightly rubber band or clump of hair at the end of the braids, just the cute little snap.

Hair snaps come in many shapes and colors, but the premise is always the same....2 sides with a hinge, and it closes with a male/female fitting. Some snaps are 2 sided (like both examples above), which means that they have the shape on both sides, and some we call "one-sided," which means they have the shape on one side, and the circular closure flap on the other side, like this...

The key to getting snaps to work for you is that you CANNOT put too much hair in them. If you think you will do a style of 3 or 4 big fat braids on the head, then get the end of those into these little snaps, it won't work. Because you have to squash the male fitting down right over the very ends of hair, and into the female fitting. If there is too much hair, it just won't close (for big fat braid styles, I like the very clean look of finishing the braid with a large-holed bead with a bead or 2 on top of it. There is a rubber band involved in this method, but it's hidden by one of the top beads. Scroll about halfway down one the web page for an explanation of this method.) Lots of moms find that, especially with new snaps, they have to bite the ends closed as it is is. I never recommend this for your teeth of course, but yes, I have done it too. Then getting them open is sometimes a bit tricky...having fingernails helps! But the good thing is that once that snap is on there, you can pull and pull on it all you want, and it probably won't open. I lose very few snaps that have a decent amount of hair in them and if I have closed them properly and captured the hair well.

Snaps do work to hold beads onto straight hair, too, but it looks better to put the snap higher up and leave a few to several inches of "tail" hair hanging down, since the very ends of straight hair will tend to stick wildly out of the snap.

Here are the basic steps of putting on a snap. In these photos, the purple cord represents the hair.

Step 1, after your beads are on (if you are using them), grab your snap and lay the tail end of the hair on the hinge.

Step 2, wrap the tail end of the hair around the hinge once or twice. I always try to do it twice. Leave a tad hanging, like .25 inch.

Step 3, close the snap tightly, laying the end bit of hair right across the male end (post) or female opening (hole) so that it gets caught in there. When I flip my snap over I can SEE the hair pressed in the hole. For snaps style #20-#22, with a tiny male and female fitting, just try to make sure the closure goes down over some of the hair.

Remember, the key is SMALL AMOUNTS OF HAIR!!!

Happy Snapping! Keep checking back for new items!

Stephanie