I'm assuming here that I'm not the only one. I've always been a little jealous of people who have the same hairstyle year in and year out. They've found what works for them while I'm still looking in the mirror trying to decide if it's time to chop it all off, or lamenting that I just chopped it all off. Or wondering if I wouldn't look better with brown/red/really blond hair.This year I've been letting my hair grow out. In part because I've spent the last few years with it shortish, but mostly because if I'm letting it grow, I don't have to pay for a New York haircut. A plan that was backed up by Briton's worst ever haircut (it was really, REALLY awful) for which we paid $50 and then had to come home and fix with clippers and crossed fingers.
I did, however, have bangs cut this fall, and I really love them. Except when I don't. See. I told you. I'm indecisive.
All this indecisiveness has led me to a new love of bobby pins. Other than securing buns, I've never really been a bobby pin girl. I'm not very adept at making them disappear into my hair, so there they sit saying "I can't control my hair, so I put five hundred pins in it to make it look slick even though it doesn't, because there are five hundred pins making it look not slick."Then along came Pinterest and it's hair tutorials and I suddenly figured out bobby pins were pretty useful, especially if they were nice looking bobby pins. But I'm cheap (see growing hair out to avoid hair cut costs) and they are bobby pins. They get lost.
So here are my three varieties of DIY bobbies.
The first, and the fastest, is to paint regular old bobby pins with Nail Polish. I know! Easy, right? I used the super fast drying variety and even with three coats I think these took all of five minutes to make.
Next we have the bevel variety. These larger circles have a small edge to them which means you can fill them with something. I've tried beads, paper circles and glitter and all have worked well with the addition of some Triple Thick Glaze to seal it all in and make it look resin-like.
Finally we have the bejeweled style. I keep an eye out for good deals in the ever expanding bead aisle of my local Michael's and usually find something pretty in the under a dollar range. Some of these are actually beads, some are meant to be mounted and the green ones started out as clearance earring (99 cents). I used wire cutters to nip off the posts before mounting them.
The trick with all three is to have the pins stay relatively flat while they dry and the best way to keep them flat is to slip them onto cardboard, a small box is best but some heavy duty cardstock will work almost as well.
I still have gobs of the blanks, especially of the bevel variety. Any ideas for what I should try next?