Thursday, February 6, 2014

Unicorn Headband

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, my sister made a Pinterest board of ideas for birthday gifts for her three girls. Well, one of those pins was for a unicorn headband found here. This woman makes the most beautiful headband AND a rainbow tail to go with it!!! I didn't make the tail :( but here's my version of the headband. I, of course, changed things up a bit from her tutorial, because I was using what I had on hand in my stash. She has an amazing way of making the spiral horn that I definitely want to try out next time :).

I started by diving in to my tins of treasures: bits and bobs that I thrift, harvest from broken jewelry, or simply find on the ground (yes! I totally pick up beads, charms, etc that I find smashed into the dirt, clean them, and then use them).

Included in my stash is a bunch of knit, felt, and fabric flowers that I made a while back as well as some store-bought crocheted flowers. In making a selection for this project I laid everything out and just started pairing things up until I liked what I saw. I chose the ivory flower headband from the above left photo (from my bachelorette party, thanks to my besties!), along with some pink felt roses, lace flowers, some "pearl" like beads on wire, the crocheted flowers, and the ivory fabric flowers from the necklace on the left below. I'd made this a couple of years back and then just stopped wearing it, so it needed a new purpose. I love the combination of pinks, aqua, green and ivory, so I got to gettin'!

First, I removed the big flower from the headband (to be used in a future project) and looped the fabric flowers on to see how they'd look. At this point, I definitely needed to do something to create a wide base on which to attach said flowers and of course, the unicorn horn!

So, here's what I came up with. My sister had given me some scrapbooking stencils a loooooong time ago and so I grabbed an oval shaped plastic piece that I'd punched out from the stencil. I hot glued it to the underside of the headband, then cut slits into it so that it'd curve a bit better. I hot glued felt onto the bottom side to hide the plastic and well, hot glue ;). I also hot glued the strip of fabric flowers onto the top of the headband, then trimmed away the excess felt. Voila! I've got my base to start building on.

Next step is to construct the unicorn horn. I took a scrap of ivory felt, folded it in two and sewed a tapering triangular shape in one line. I then trimmed away the excess, turned it right side out and stuffed it (regular fiber fill, or fabric scraps, whatever you please!). I cut out a circle for the bottom and stitched that on and then wrapped a length of the wired beads around the horn before stitching them down along the back seam. After I'd finished, I just hot glued it in place right onto the plastic surface.

Finally, all that was left was to start filling in the ugly plastic with all of those pretty flowers! I simply hot glued them all in place, layering them so as to build an interesting arrangement. Here's how it came out:

Soooo pretty!!!!!!! Well, in MY opinion, it is ;). I think the only self-criticism I have is I'd have made the horn slightly shorter...like by at least an inch. Oh well, I still think and hope my second-youngest niece will love this! It feels so fanciful and romantic and I hope she wears it with one of her frilliest dresses as she pretends to be a magical creature...to be a kid again! 

So, start digging around in your stash! If you don't have felt and fabric flowers already made, there are tons of tutorials on how to make every kind imaginable, and most of them only require hot glue and scissors :). This was practically no-sew, and really, completely no-sew if you follow the inspiration's tutorial (even better!). I'm so lucky to have nieces to make girly things for now and then, and I'm kinda glad we don't have a daughter or I might get in trouble with all of the amazing stuff I want to make for girls ;). 

I'll have one last post about DIY girl birthday gifts for tomorrow then back to refashions! Stay tuned <3

Peace,
Andrea

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