Felt Flower Crown DIY

Today I'm sharing a post I apparently started and basically completed 11 months ago… then completely forgot about because I moved across country, started a career, and was planning a DIY heavy wedding.  I even re-took all of the in progress pictures making another version of this project, thinking that I hadn't taken them the first time. What a waste of time I could have spent crafting my wedding. Ooops. 

But anyway.  Here it is my friends, a tutorial that is only really useful if you have some fairly specific crafting equipment… (Which was also featured in my flower garland tutorial forever ago) But I will say, there are going to be many many more tutorials using this specific equipment in the following months. My entire wedding decor would not have been possible without my Sizzix machine. But for that you must wait until July. SORRY!

Materials

*Sizzix Machine or other die-cut machine

*Sizzix die (The one I used was the Tim Holtz Tattered Florals)

*Craft felt (getting it cut by the yard is so much cheaper, but you can absolutely use the precut rectangles in the craft department)

* Revolving Hole Punch

*Some kind of bead or pearl, the ones seen here were a little too small.

*Thin guage floral wire.

*18 guage floral wire

*Wire cutters

*Floral Tape

*Ribbon if desired

Let's get these steps going!

Get your Die Cutter ready.

Put your felt over the flower you want to cut. For this project I used scraps from other projects.

Put the die and felt between the cutting plates of your die machine and run it through the machine.

Repeat until you have as many flowers as you think it will take to go all the way around your head.Then make a couple more just in case.  In this case I stacked two of the tiny flowers on top of each other for a fuller look.

Use your hole punch to put a hole in the middle of every stack of flowers.

Admire all of the work you have done so far.

Then take the thin gauge wire and cut it into 4 or 5 inch lengths. One wire per flower.

Thread a bead through the wire, center it, fold the wire in half with the bead in the middle, then twist the two ends of the wire together.

You end up with this twisted wire pin.

Repeat until you have one pin per flower stack.

Then cut the 18 gauge wire slightly larger than the circumference of your head where you want the crown to sit. Twist the extra wire overlapping so you have the correct size ring of wire.

Wrap the part where the wire overlaps with the floral tape. You have to tug on the floral tape a little bit to stretch it out and activate the stickiness. 

Put the pin through the flower

Position the flower on the crown with the pin part facing inward of the crown and the flower on the outside.

Twist the tail of the pin around the crown wire.

Wrap the floral tape around the stem but just to where the next flower will start. As you go you will wrap the whole wire ring with tape and it will pad all the little ends of the wire that would otherwise stab you and get caught in your hair. 

Possition your next flower and repeat. (I suggest overlapping the flowers a little bit, it makes it look less sparse, I did not do that in this picture and I regret it.)

Repeat until you've gone all the way around, or leave a little room for a statement flower in the back. 

Here is the statement flower, but for some reason I didn't take any pictures of me attaching it. Darnnit May 2015 Sam. You're making April 2016 Sam look bad. But it goes on just like all the others. Punch a hole, thread a pin, twist the wire, wrap the wire.

I added curling ribbon to this one afterwards… Also forgot to take pictures of that… Gosh. 

I gave the crown made during this tutorial to a really great friend of mine who loves America. Like so much. She's the most American person I know and I adore her. She wore it to a country music concert during the summer. So American.

(Featuring a friend of hers who I assume fell asleep, and someone not wearing a shirt… America at it's finest)