The Kingdom Braid (Doll Version)

"Some little girls were braiding one another's hair nearby. When they saw Rapunzel approaching, their eyes lit up with delight. They had never braided such long hair before! When they were finished, Rapunzel walked away with a neat braid bundled down her back."
                                                                       --Tangled: A Dazzling Day

 I had had plans to take my new doll out into some form of nature, be it my back yard or actually somewhere more photogenic to take some pictures of her long hair unbound and beautiful. Well, that plan fell to the wayside. I was combing her hair and found myself bored and really, REALLY, wanting to put Rapunzel's hair in her signature floral kingdom braid, so I gave in and did so.

I have done this braid multiple times on multiple different dolls, but I think this doll had hers turn out the best. It was probably because of her size that made it a lot easier to work with. I meant to take pictures of the progression of the braid so that others reading this could use it as a tutorial for their Rapunzel dolls or other long haired dolls they had sitting in their collection.

The best I could do would be to describe what I did to the doll with a typed explanation here. I may end up doing this braid again sometime in the future and at that point I will take photographs for reference.

• The first thing to do is to make sure the doll's hair is clean and tangle free. For this doll, that took washing her hair in conditioner in order to soften and clean it as well as some gentle combing. If you comb a doll's hair too hard you may pull out a lot of the hair and there is no growing back!

• Next, I lifted the hair up so that I could get at the hair at the nape of her neck. Here, I crafted two small braids that would be the accent braids that ran through the main braid. I have seen some people just wrap these braids in a double-helix shape around the main braid, but that is not how it really appeared in the film. I was going for something a little more screen accurate.

• Before I moved onto the main braid, I worked on the other two small braids on either side of Rapunzel's head. In life, these would be done with Dutch braids, but since she was a doll and her hair did not behave like real human hair (in terms of the amount of hair that is actually in the doll's head and how it is spread), I carefully sectioned off two portions of hair from the front and braided them so that they were at the right angle to flow back towards the back of the head. This was a little tricky as I wanted to preserve her pouf-bang look while still getting the correct braid.

• The hardest part of the braid was about to come up! I took the two front braids and crossed them so they formed an X behind Rapunzel's head. I held the crossed braids in one hand and separated out the main three section of the larger braid. The front braids were then matched to the section of hair that was opposite from the side they had originated on. Thus, the front braid that started on the left-side of Rapunzel's head was matched with the main braid portion that stated on the right side of Rapunzel's head. Any part of the front braid that was still braided beyond the crossing point I unbraided so that the front braid would end at the cross and not become another accent braid in the main braid; mainly because it was so much larger than the other accent braid and would take away from it!

• With that bit of trickiness, done, start to braid the main braid. Do not go too far since you will want to only secure the front braids so that you can pick up the accent braids and begin to incorporate them into the main braid. This part can be tricky as well, but not nearly as much as the previous step. Make sure the accent braids can be see on the top of the main braid, or else what was the point in putting them in there? Once they are lined up, braiding the rest of the hair will be simple. 

• Finish braiding the hair then add flowers as you see fit! Being screen accurate with the flowers is hard to do on a doll, and no one will fault you for just using small flowers you have found at a craft store. I found mine at the bridal department in the craft store. This makes the color choice usually limited to pastels, but they still look lovely in her hair. I had some yellow ones at one time as well, but they got used in the customized bridal Rapunzel I did; another post for another time.

 

And there she is! All complete and ready for her day in the kingdom of Corona with Flynn Rider. 

(PS - You can click on the images above to see them in a larger scale so that you can study the braid closer if needed for your own doll's hair. Good luck!)