The Perfect Ballet Bun {Tutorial} & What to do With all That Hair

Because I know I’m not the only ballet mom in the world with a daughter who has a headful of shedding hair that must find its way into the perfect ballet bun, I’m sharing my tips on how to get the perfect bun, and how to clean up afterwards with this shop that has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #CleaningUntangled #CollectiveBias

Back in the day I could rock a back Dutch braid that ended in a high, über curled ponytail and induced three day long pressure headaches. I wasn’t a ballet girl. I wasn’t even a graceful girl. I was straight up ‘hood, y’all. I could rock out a hip hop dance like nobody’s business, and I was relatively good at jazz, as long as you didn’t ask me to do a quadruple pirouette or something crazy. My big ol’ booty just never let me get my center quite right, or at least that’s what I’m blaming it on. Yeah, that. Totally that.

When I found out I was having a little girl, I ran the gamut of emotions. I went from being terrified to excited to anxious to elated. When you have a little girl, you don’t just have to worry about that little girl. You suddenly have to worry about every little boy in the world, and little girls too. Because as we all know, little girls aren’t always the nicest people in the galaxy. Sad, but true.

The one thing I did know was that my daughter was going to be a ballerina. The moment she learned to walk, she was going to be enrolled in ballet classes and I was going to be the ultimate dance mom. Practice? I got this. Stretching at home? Dude. Dress rehearsal? Old hat. Performances? Psh. I couldn’t wait to relive it all. My glory days, only I wouldn’t be the one smearing Vaseline on her teeth and touting the red lipstick under the bright lights in front of screaming, adoring fans.

At the ripe age of 3, Madilyn was enrolled in ballet. Things were not as I remembered them. Yes, I’m aware you aren’t supposed to wear underwear with tights and a leotard, but please try to tell that to my 3 year old who is supposed to wear underwear at every time, all the times. A BUN? For ballet class? Do you know what it’s like to force your fine-haired 3 year old to sit still in front of you while you eradicate shark fins and eliminate flyaways? Did you know that a bun maker is NOT a proper ballet bun and that a proper ballerina should have a wide, flat bun that isn’t visible from stage?

Yeah, I didn’t either.

When I was in dance, we teased our hair as big as we could get it for most of our performances. Long live dance team in the 90s.

Let’s just take a moment to pay homage to the hundreds of strands of hair that fall out of Madilyn’s hair every time I brush it. The girl has lots of hair, but I’m not sure how, judging by the sheer amount of hair that falls out of her head daily. My hair is bad too. I don’t brush it often because it’s wavy and I don’t like channeling Buckwheat on a regular basis. I have to dampen my hair and run my fingers through it, trying to shove my way through the dreadlocks that form at the nape of my neck while I sleep. I pull handfuls of hair out of my hair every, single day. I could probably spin a beautiful fox-colored yarn from my hair and crochet expensive sweaters for all of my friends and family members for Christmas every year. Since Madilyn apparently got my shedding practices through way of the mighty gene, I might add flax colored scarves to the list. Needless to say, we go through vacuums like Perez Hilton goes through gossip.

I apologize for that detour, our hairs are very important to us. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

I scoured the internet for tutorials on how to do the proper ballet bun. I found everything from using the bun maker to doing a braid bun to “The Proper Ballet Bun” which didn’t seem like the proper ballet bun to me at all.

Fortunately, our new ballet mistress was a prima ballerina with the Atlanta Ballet and she knows exactly what a real ballet bun should look like. I’ve learned a lot this year. Fortunately, it is a lot more simple than one may think. The recipe for a perfect ballet bun includes five ingredients and a little patience to learn how to do it right.

Ingredients: gel or pomade, strong hold hairspray, one hair elastic, bobby pins, and a hair net.

 How to get the perfect ballet bun

Step 1:

If possible, start with slightly damp hair, and some pomade or gel rubbed into the palm of your hands. Begin by smoothing all of the hair back into a ponytail at the very crown of the head. You don’t want the ponytail to be too high or too low. Find the spot where the upward curve of the skull ends and begins to flatten out into the top of your head. That is the spot where you want to begin gathering your ponytail.

Step 2:

Using a boar’s hair bristle brush and a gel or pomade slathered hand, smooth the hair all over the head out in order to eliminate those annoying shark fins. Once you have the hair smoothed out, use the hair elastic to put the hair into a ponytail, making sure hair stays smooth as you put the elastic on.

Step 3:

Spray all over the hair with strong-hold hairspray while pressing and smoothing the hair out with your hand. If you are dealing with bangs, use some hair clips to ensure they stay in place.

Step 4:

Begin twisting the ponytail loosely. Because you want the bun as flat as you can get it, you don’t want to twist it too hard. As you wrap the ponytail around itself, use the bobby pins to secure the bun into place every couple inches. Tuck the tail of the ponytail into the bun and secure with one final bobby pin.

Step 5:

Put the hair net on the bun by wrapping it around the bun as many times as it needs to go to be secure. Madilyn’s hair net only needs to be wrapped twice. Spray the bun with hairspray and make sure any flyaways are smoothed out with one, final blast of spray.

Step 6:

Vacuum up all of the hair that fell out while you were making that bun with the Eureka Brushroll Clean™with SuctionSeal®. I spent ridiculous amounts of money on a super popular “OMG you need one of these or you fail as a housewife” type vacuums five years ago, and it has needed to be repaired twice in that five years. We finally gave up on it for Eureka’s far superior products. The Eureka Brushroll Clean™ cleans the tangled, gnarly hair out of the brushroll with the touch of a button. No more sitting down, gagging as you cut hair and dust and thread out of the brushroll of your vacuum.

The best part about this vacuum is that, unless you want two vacuums in your house, you won’t need two vacuums because it works on both hard and soft floors and comes with attachments for those hard-to-reach spots in your house. Vacuuming the bathroom just got a whole lot easier.

Say goodbye to flaxen human hair crochet scarves and hello to easy cleaning. 

You’re welcome.

Be sure to check out more about the Eureka Brushroll Clean™ with SuctionSeal® at http://cbi.as/upw7r. How much easier and less gaggy would cleaning become for you with this awesome new vacuum?

Eureka #CleaningUntangled Sweeps!

Huge thanks to Beth Roberts of Roberts Creative Marketing & Design for the great pictures!