DIY Flower Crown

As the summer months roll in, festival season is upon us. Or maybe for some, it's con season and you need the perfect flower crown for your character.

I see people walking around in the summer with little dandelions tied together, or with fabric flowers surrounding their heads. However, to me, this isn't a flower crown. I wanted bigger and I wanted more flowers!

Using some fake flowers you can pick up at any craft store, I began playing with making flower crowns with lots of leaves, with roses, and with little flowers. Turns out, it's super easy to channel your inner basic girl into making these beautiful flower crowns!

If you're not into stringing daises together that will die in a few days, here is what you need:

• Green floral/paddle wire
• Planter tape/green tape
• Fake flowers (pick as many varieties as you would like)
• Hot glue

OPTIONAL:

• Gold spray paint. I only had blue tape which doesn't look like a natural light, so I chose to use gold. Green spray paint also works over any type of tape for a natural look.
• LED lights. This is a small 36" LED strand that's battery powered. If you like the led look, you can add these in.

Taking your wire, measure your head in a loop around, do not make it any tighter than it has to be. Add an extra 4-6 inches so it sits on your head loosely, maybe it even will fall down. This is fine, it will be more full later.

Cut the wire at the end of your loop (+ tolerance) and twist the ends together. Taking another length of wire, wrap/coil the wire around the loop. This gives the crown a more firm structure in the base layer.

Wire really hurts when it pokes into you, and it especially hurts when it pokes into your head. To prevent this from happening, I like wrapping my crowns in tape! It's super easy and quick and also gives you a much larger base to glue your flowers to!

Coil the tape around once/twice (depending on your desired thickness, I wrapped twice).

I suggested using green or a painted tape earlier in case you have a gap in the flowers of the crown. Green can look like a leave or part of a flower while blue looks like, well, tape.

Once again, this step can be bypassed with a green planter tape.

Relocate to a well ventilated area, preferably outside. Place a paper towel or cardboard down to spray paint on.

A few notes about spray paint- You do not need to be close to use it, in fact it will run more if you are spraying right up next to it. Also, if you are painting outside, note the direction of the wind. A gust of wind will be your enemy and can blow the paint right back on to you.

Spray your crown, top and bottom, and let sit to dry.

It's now time to add the flowers to "flower crown"! You might want to look at your flowers first and pick your flower pattern, laying it out in a circle.

Pro tip: Space your big flowers out. The pink flowers I have are substantially larger than the little daises, so I space the pint flowers equi-distant out around the crown. Another popular style is to put all the big flowers on the top like a headband and add the little flowers underneath.

Adding a streak of hot glue to the plastic back of the flower, press it on to the crown and hold for a few seconds. If your flowers have a plastic backing for a stem, these can either be bent around the crown or cut off. If your flowers have a wire stem (like my pink flowers), you can either wrap the wire stem around the crown for added support, or cut it off entirely.

Pro tip: Fake leaves are WONDERFUL for hiding your glue and bare spots on the crown.

Repeat this process of gluing flowers on and arranging until you have filled all your bare spots or have at least covered the visible parts of the crown.

Hopefully with no hot glue burns, you are done! You now have a beautifully made flower crowns perfect for any festival, costume, or star bucks run.

Remember the LEDs from the beginning? At this point, I took the copper LED wire and coiled it around the flower crown, hiding the wire under flower petals. This made the petals look to be lighting up which was a really cool effect. I love these LEDs because the aren't bulky and they are easy to hide. The battery back can then be glued to the back and covered in flowers.

Things to try:

If you know for a face you want LEDs, you could probably remove the battery pack and use a smaller battery or a better design battery pack in your crown. I have yet to try this, but I would love to hear if someone has.

Thanks for reading!