The Adventures of Making: Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

What do you get when you take a bit of plain white cotton, some buttons, a few felt-tip
pens, and a bit of elastic ? Duh! A flower crown of course!

When seeing the pictures of my refashion show in my last post, I noticed something...

I'll give you a hint: it's on the model's head..

Yep, those fabulous fabric flowers! Back in the day, I had made them from some lining fabric from an old skirt, and they were quite a hit.
So I thought: why not give that idea another go? But since copy-pasting old ideas is boring, I decided to shake things up a little, and make an entire fabric flower crown with it. Because you need it in your life, obviously!

First, measure the amount of elastic you need, by simply wrapping it around your head. The elastic band will be the base of your flower crown. ( pro tip: if your old clothes are in too bad a shape to be donated to a thrift shop, at least harvest all reusable bits and pieces such as elastic, buttons, zippers and velcro from it. Your future self -and the earth- will be grateful for that!)

Yep, that head definitely needs some flowers!

A few simple stitches ( no, not a knot, you lazy crafter!) sufficed to turn the elastic into a very simple headband. (don't bother too much about the loose ends of the elastic, You'll deal with them when attaching the flowers!

With the makeshift hairband ready, it was time to add some flowers to my life. Or crown. Or both perhaps. Remembering the steps from last time, I figured "Meh, should be easy! I'll only need some fancy fabric and a few buttons!"

But of course! Mayhem, mayhem! Despite some very furious digging through my humble fabric stash, there was absolutely nothing that I liked. I am an excuse of a refashioner. What good is a refashioner with a fabric stash that fits in a shoebox? A disgrace, that is what I am!

But desperate times call for brilliant ideas, and I decided that I could make my own printed fabric for the flowers! Hahaa!

I took a bit of plain white cotton, and grabbed some felt-tip pens.
I snatched Joost's desk ( I mean, it's not like I want to sacrifice my own desk when things go wrong...), and started doodling little dotted circles onto the white fabric.

dot dot dot...

You may be thinking: that's the most boring print I've ever seen... But wait, 'cause there is some magic about to happen....

I grabbed some rubbing alcohol, and a little brush to apply it..

And dropped one or two drops of alcohol right in the middle of my dots ( making sure the drop didn't touch the dots immediately)

And see what happens as the alcohol stain expands....

uh-mazing!

Quite cool, hmm? (Of course, I wasn't the inventor of this, so all credits to the unknown person who came up with this little trick!)

different patterns for different effects..

By now, Joost's study room was smelling like I was running a meth lab in there!

I made them in series of 5 that were kind of similar in colour, because I'll need 5 circles for each flower.

When I had about enough ( the desired amount of flowers times 5, that is)
I cut little circles from the fabric, each with a pink dot-thingy in the middle. ( they don't need to be perfect: I like them a little wonky!)

don't be afraid to be crooked! A lesson that applies both to crafting and life in general

The size of the circle is about the same size as the flower, so that is easy :)

Are you already begin to see the resemblance to rose petals?

Time to assemble the flowers!

First, pick 5 circles with similar shape and colour.

completely intoxicated by the fumes of the rubbing alcohol, I forgot to take further pictures during the original making of, so I had to reenact the whole process before I could write this post...

place of the circles in flat in front of you, that is your base.
Fold a second one in half, like so:

I always sucked very, very hard at origami, so my description is very detailed..

... and... fold again!

you can do it!

and... that's about as difficult as it gets!

Place your folded circle, on top of your base:

remind me to never begin a nail art blog...

and repeat the process for the other circles:

that's two... ( you can pin them down for a minute if you like)

and all four of them! ( I skipped step three, living on the edge!)

Then I took some nice buttons ( again: harvest your old clothes! ) And sewed all the pices together:

like that! By only sewing the corners of the leaves, you can fluff them a little.

If you sew them down neatly, you'll get an open flower, but by ruffling them a bit whilst sewing, or folding some leaves back ( see picture) you can create other types of flowers as well

fold!

All that was left to do was repeating all that a dozen times, a sew all my flowers to my alestic headband. ( Since elastic stretches, it's place the flowers tightly together)

and done!!

I am quite happy with this! It made a really good hairband for easter, when we all went to my parent's home for some family-time and egg-hunting.
My little nieces went wild over it: "You've got fowers in your 'air, me too!"

I'm judging you for not wearing a flower crown..

And two seconds after trying to wriggle her own head together with mine in the flower crown (thankfully, it didn't snap) my eldest niece (4) raced upstairs to my old room, to try on my gala dresses, and announced proudly whilst balancing in my way-too-big heels, and holding up a huge skirt around her tiny waist: "Marije, I have something to tell you! You are allowed to make a mermaid suit for me! "
Thanks kiddo, I think we need to work on this whole "asking a favor" thing though;)

So anyways, there probably will be a mermaid-refashion coming up soon ;)

My youngest niece of almost 2 turned out to be a professional in walking in high heels, stuffing her feet with rain boots and all in my stiletto's, and waddling around on it. Quite impressive ;)