Wrap Buddies

Yesterday was wrap party day!!! No not Christmas gift wrapping, I'm talking about Addy-girl's helmet wrapping party! It was so much fun and now Addyson is so stylin' with her new "head wrap".

I found out about a great place called 360 Wraps through our PT. They are a car graphics design business that started up a non-profit on the side to help out some cute babies that had to wear ugly helmets. A few years back a man whose son had to wear a DocBand contacted 360 Wraps and asked if they could wrap a medical helmet just the way they wrapped helmets for race car drivers. They gave it shot and stumbled into a line of work that would keep them busy for years to come. After doing a tiny bit of research, they learned how expensive the bands are and that insurance doesn't cover any of it, so they wrapped the baby's helmet completely free of charge. Not knowing how prevalent brachycephaly and plagiocephaly are, the owner encouraged the dad to spread the word, not thinking that he would ever wrap another DocBand again. Now this January they will wrap their 1,000th band! They were even featured on CBS.

Word spread extremely fast from one mom to the next, and 360 Wraps could barely keep up. 3 years later they've got their process down to a science. They created a non-profit organization and called it Wrap Buddies. They essentially have a "wrapping party" and bring in around 10 families once a month to makeover these babies helmets all at once. In 2 hours time all the babies are rocking new and improved bands!

Here are a few pics from our wrap party!

Here is our "before" shot. This is what the template looks like before it goes on the helmet. We picked out a design and they measured her helmet before getting started. The blue that's above is for a little boy, and the bottom sliver shows another little girl's.

Here, the girls are priming the helmets and the guys are getting started with a band. And yes it was potluck, so we all had lots of yummy food to snack on while we waited!

This is miss priss playing with her new friend Hadley, and trying to steal an iPhone out of Hadley's diaper bag. Daddy doesn't approve of stealing little girl...

(and neither does Mommy for that matter)

This is Tyler. He put Addyson's helmet on a stand and started the process of stretching, heating, smoothing, stretching, heating, smoothing...

Smoothing...

A little stretching...

And I could never get a picture of him heating with the blow torch because he went so dang fast!

Final touches, trimming up the edges.

 

And the finished product...drum roll please...

Ta-Da!!! Cute huh?



Here's the back

She was jazzed

 

While we were there we got to see a sweet little girl named Maggie get her walker wrapped! She has two prosthetic legs, but she didn't need those wrapped because she had them completely decked out in rhinestones!!!



 

It's such a great thing that this company is doing for these sweet babies and their families! Since this is a non-profit, Wrap Buddies can accept donations and if you would like to help them continue wrapping DocBands you can do that HERE.

 

Here is one last pic of my sugar plum, and the owner of 360 Wraps, Tommy Strader

 

 

God is so good for putting people in our lives who use their talents, equipment, money, and time to help bring joy to others.