How to do Cindy Lou Who Hair

   Today B's school had their annual read-a-thon, this is a way the school raises funds for new books. The students have a few weeks to get pledges from friends and family then when its the day to turn them in (read-a-thon) they have a fun day of reading.
What's really fun is the whole school gets to dress up as a children's literary character of their choice. It's a bit of a friendly competition as classes with most participation, monetary donations and donated books win prizes, the most creative, original, and best costume also wins a prize.
It is a really neat way the school raises funds and the whole school from students, teachers, administration and parents get involved.
  
  Well this is my B's first year and she decided she wanted to be Cindy Lou Who from
How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
I nearly squealed when she said that's what she wanted to be, as Christmas is my absolute favorite time of the year!
I also love that she chose something on her own, I gave her some suggestions of things I could think of like Madeline, Pippi Longstocking, a mouse, a princess, Cindy Lou Who, Mary Poppins etc. She ended up choosing Cindy Lou Who which I thought was fantastic for a few reasons; there was room be creative, she didn't choose a character based on her friend's influences, as a few of the girls had told her what they wanted to be and I knew it would be a fun costume to put together.
She even kept it a secret from her classmates until a few days before read-a-thon!
She came home saying so and so "is going to be Charlotte from Charlotte's Web" so and so "is going to be Belle"... "But I didn't tell them mine because I don't want them to like my idea so much they use it, so I want it to be a surprise"... smart girl!

  The first thing I looked up inspiration for on pinterest was Cindy Lou Who hair.
I mean the hair really makes the costume, but how in the world do you get all that hair to stick up?!
I watched a few tutorials, and took some inspiration from each one, I did not copy any one idea.
The reasons just one tutorial didn't work is all the tutorials I saw was on adult hair, one lady had extremely long hair, another had natural curls, and another had short hair.
So I played with a few inspirations a few days prior and settled with some tweaks that worked best for her hair

Here we go with how I did B's:
It's a little hard to see in this picture but I basically sectioned off the top half of her hair and split it into 3 sections with the middle section being a little smaller,
the middle section is sticking straight up ,
I used a hair tie on the back section so it wouldn't get mixed in with the back half of her hair, 
the front section is just hanging out in her face...

 I cut a one liter coke bottle in half, I did this based on the length of her hair,
When I had done a trial run a couple nights before I decided a whole liter bottle was too big,
I tried a cup which worked well I just didn't know how to make it stay,
So I decided I would use a bottle and as a way to reinforce it, feed some of her hair through the bottle
So that middle section is what was fed through the bottle as you can see in this picture..

Once I fed the hair through the bottle, I picked up the front section of hair and began covering the front and sides of the bottle,
You don't want the bottle showing at all,

 Then, I took out the hair tie from the back section and began using the hair to cover the back and sides of the bottle,
I used a little detangling spray in the front to smooth down some of the frizzies, and combed that up,

 Once the bottle was covered with her hair I put a hair tie at the neck of the bottle,
Securing the top of the hair to the bottle,
the hair will flow over and down kind of like a fountain which is fine you'll curl that later.

 I did not get a good picture of how a parted the back of her hair so here's a picture of the back once it's done,
Just trying to show you I split the back of her hair in two and braided the two sides,
It looks crooked here, but it's not, it's just the angle of the picture

 Once the back is in two braids, I began curling the pieces on top near the spout of the bottle,
K has joined us now! :)

 You want to curl these sections under, to make it look like the hair is ribbon on top of a Christmas present.

 I bought lots of supplies from the dollar store and just used some ribbon to tie around the top of the bottle so it's not visible,
I also added little Christmas ribbons with twist ties on the ends of the braids before bringing the braid up and bobby pinning it to the side.
Once the braid is bobby pinned up, you'll want to curl the ends of the braids under as well
Once done I sprayed LOTS of hair spray to keep it all in place

 Here's a great side shot of what it looks like when it's all done!

 I didn't do step by step pics of her make-up,
My sister gets all credit for the make up! she worked on that while I did B's hair, spoiled girl!
she did peach blush, with silver sparkles on her cheeks and eyes
she also added false lashes as Cindy Lou Who has LOOONG lashes :)

There you have it! Cindy Lou Who hair!
It took me just over an hour to complete her look, this doesn't include dressing time as she slept in these PJ's the night before to make life easier on all of us.

 Just to give you an idea, this was her hair at lunch time about 5-5.5 hours later.
It still held up very well throughout the day!
Our waitress even asked to touch it haha