Haku Lei Making

One of the spouse groups I am apart of did Lei making this past weekend. We made Haku Leis, or “head” leis. It was SO MUCH FUN, and so amazing how easy it is to make them beautiful (not necessarily easy to make in general). She taught us a little about the materials, usage, and the language around leis.

Here are the materials she brought us, which I was honestly at first disappointed they weren’t plumerias, but who am I to distrust an expert! Plumerias would have been ok, but they don’t handle well and brown easily, so retrospectively, listen to the lei expert.

The first thing we did was braid some long strings of some organic material, I forget the name, and then wrap a long tea leaf around it. This was kind of the base of the lei.

Then we started adding greenery in an X “shape” followed by the wrapping of a second string around the greenery. You kinda pinched the leaves and they make a cracking sound and our teacher would say “it’s ok they’re talking to you”. Then, you add flowers and wrap the string around the stem to hold it in place.

I would say it took about an hour in total of doing this. Once you’re done, she crowns you and ties it off at the back of your head.

I thought it was amazing how all of ours turned out different and all so beautiful. I want to keep mine forever, but since I can’t I just took a million pictures of it.

I told you there’d be Lei spam!