Prepare yourself for the most unhelpful do-it-yourself blog post ever! Just kidding.
Note: This DIY post is for the resourceful and for the impulsive. I wasn’t really planning to do a flower crown last Saturday night, but I ended up making one for no reason at all (???). And since I didn’t exactly prepare for it, I had to settle for using random bits and pieces around the house as materials.
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Time: 2 hours (for newbies like me, probably)
Materials:
As I mentioned, I didn’t have the time to go out to a hobby/specialty store and buy the materials Pinterest boards recommend. So here’s a list of the actual recommended materials, and the you-also-probably-have-them-in-your-house alternatives I used instead.
- Floral wire. This should be thin, sturdy, and easy to bend. Alternative: thick and uncooperative bits of wire I killed some bendy rollers for. They took some time and several minutes with the pliers to straighten out. You can also probably use household wire. Just be careful.
- Green Florist’s Tape. Florist’s tape or floral tape is used for bouquets and other arrangements. According to the internet, it needs to be pulled a bit for it to become sticky. Alternative: Honestly, who owns this kind of thing? Up until now, I still haven’t found a store that sells it. The tape will ideally be used for both the wire base and the attachment of the flowers. I used varying widths of ribbon instead.
- Wire cutters.
- Flowers (fake or real). For the flower crown. Obviously. I personally prefer to have flowers of different sizes. Add in some leaves for variety as well. Note: Since no one in our house really has a spare bouquet lying around, I was lucky to find a bunch of fake, decorative flowers left over from my lola’s 85th birthday party (blogged about here, by the way). In fact, I got the idea of making a crown when I was snooping around my mom’s stuff and found these fake pink and white flowers.
- Ribbon. For design and attachment.
- Glue gun. Safe to use only when dealing with fake flowers. What a nightmare if you used it on real ones.
Procedure:
First, secure the materials. If you don’t have the ideal ones, get creative! Or ask your neighbor.
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Second, create the wire base of the crown.
Measure the circumference of your head, depending on how you want to wear it (as a wreath, crown, headband and so on) and on your hairstyle (if you wear braids or some other updo, the circumference needs to be a bit bigger). Leave some allowance since adding flowers will definitely thicken the crown.
Wrap ribbon (or floral tape) around the crown. Choose the color wisely.
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Third, attach the flowers to the wire base.
Since this is a fail!DIY, I don’t actually have any photos showing how I attached the flowers. But it’s very intuitive.
Visualize the kind of pattern you want to have. Do you want the flowers widely spaced, clumped, or thick? Evenly spread or not? Cut the flowers (real or fake) with at least one to two inches (ideally two for real flowers) of stem remaining. Place them around the wire and begin attaching!
I attached the fake flowers with a creative and somewhat messy mix of glue gun and thin pale pink ribbon. Attachment for real flowers (which I’ve yet to try) should be done with floral tape. Basically, you wrap over the stem(s) of the individual/grouped flower(s) you are attaching. Alternative: thread, thin ribbon.
Bury or partly cover the stem of the first attached flower with the blossom of the succeeding flower. Do this until you achieve the desired look; try to aim for a balanced (quantity and color-wise) look. This step took the longest because the crown kept coming out as lopsided, so I had to keep adding and removing flowers here and there.
And there you have it –my bulky, super romantic crown!
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I love flower crowns!
I love flowers (I even press flowers as a hobby!). And I’ve always loved wearing flower crowns. It’s both a nod to my love of nature and a way to instantly feel awesome (beautiful flowers add 100x more beauty to a person!!). I even have one of those (exorbitantly-priced) elastic flower headbands from H&M/Cotton On/Forever 21. It’s broken now though.
https://www.instagram.com/p/3WbJEKK5X8uVYyVfx5vSb_BJuzoO3O-GrLKXU0/
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In fact, I loved the crown I made so much that I wore it while walking around the cemetery. It’s always fun to confound people and to make them smile (or laugh, in several cases). I can’t wait for the day when we can just wear flower crowns whenever we want and not be judged for it. Hihi.
I’ll hopefully be making another flower crown this Friday for my graduation creative shot (this time with real flowers) –though I still don’t even have a dress (if I can’t find one soon I’ll have to go naked…). I’ll update if I got to make a fresh flower crown successfully!
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Thanks for reading!
jari m 