Share Your Hair

The past few weeks have been busy, but exciting. Last weekend, I spent the afternoon with a handful of adorable girlies from my elementary school, as we cut our hair to be donated to Locks of Love and the Pantene Beautiful Lengths programs. Two years ago, we gathered a group of girls to participate in this event. My hair was long enough again to cut for donation, so we rallied another group of girls to visit a local salon for a fun afternoon of sharing our hair. :)

As the girls started to arrive, a regular customer of the salon was finishing up with getting her hair done. She pulled a few of us aside to tell us how touched she was to hear what we were doing. She then shared that she was suffering from breast cancer and was going in for a mastectomy on Monday. It was such amazing experience for the girls to hear her story. It couldn't have been more perfect! (She's in the background of the photo below, waiting for her hair to set).

Our friend from Chick-fil-A also stopped by for some hair styling. She didn't have any hair to cut, but she had lots of fun pretending to style the girls' hair while they waited. Chick-fil-A generously donated some of the refreshments that we had for our girls. 

We called our campaign "Share Your Hair" this year, symbolized by a cute little cartoon girl with long hair. I was inspired by these cuties that I found on Pinterest and created a similar image to use on flyers hung around the building. Our science teacher came up with the idea of creating stickers that our girls could wear each day to advertise that they were participating. The stickers were a big hit. Every morning, the girls would come by and pick out a sticker to wear that day. it was cute to watch them pick out the hair color they wanted to don that day. :)

Along with the stickers and flyers, I made these thank you cards for the girls. You can see them on display on the refreshment table in the photo above. I created a bunch of flower clips using this tutorial and clipped them onto matching cards I made of little girls sporting short hair. The clips were super easy to make and really inexpensive since I had white fabric and felt on hand and lots of colorful buttons in my stash. A quick run to the craft store to purchase some clips and I was set.

To make the cards, I die cut ovals for the faces using the Oval Sizzlets Collection (the largest oval) with Apricot Appeal card stock. Then I created a template for the hair, which I cut using Basic Black, Chocolate Chip, Soft Suede, and Summer Sun. I punched out the ears, using a circle punch, then adhered the hair with some Dimensionals. More circle punches for the eyes and the mouth (I used Basic Black and Pretty in Pink for all of them). Then, I just slid the clips right on the hair. Here's a photo of the card without the clip attached.

Of course, since not everyone loves pink, I made the centers of the flowers in a variety of colors - blue, yellow, red, purple... I didn't photograph all the cards, because I was hoping to get a better photo of the cards on the refreshment table, but I missed it. 

Our girls ranged from Kindergarten to 5th graders, plus we had a few parents and even a grandparent. Some of our girls were getting a real hair cut for the first time ever, while a couple of our girls had participated in our event last time. Our science teacher also came along for the fun and donated 14 inches of her hair! Together, we gathered 12 bundles and over 125 inches of hair to send in to the two organizations! All in all, I would call it success!