Hair Flowers

I love wearing a big hair garden, but I am rather particular with the colours and flowers I like to use. I haven’t been too keen on the flowers I’ve seen available for purchase, and the clips I saw on them didn’t look sturdy enough for my finicky hair. So very early on I decided to buy the silk flowers and clips, and make them myself.

What you will need:

• silk flowers
• some sturdy fabric (calico, canvas or the like)
• some felt of an appropriate colour (I prefer green as it looks like leaves, you can use other colours that match your hair, or the flower itself)
• aligator clips; you can find them as aligator clips, hair bows, or metal hair clips. I prefer the longer types at least 5.6cm
• E6000 or another similar type of contact glue; you can use hot glue, but I find that with my body heat, items attached with a glue gun fall off, so I’ve stopped using it; YMMV
• scissors; I use pinking shears to give the wavy look but you can use normal ones

First, make sure you are working in a well ventilated area, as we’ll be using contact glue that can give headaches and other undesireable side effects.

Cut some rectangles out of your felt, slightly smaller than the flowers’ diameter. You will trim these down so don’t worry about very specific measurements; as long as they are roughly smaller than the flowers, they will do.

Spread your glue over the felt, generously so it covers the whole surface, but not that much that it saturates the felt.

Grab a scrap (or several) of your strong fabric, and press the glue side of the felt squares onto it, so that one or more of the felt pieces are over one piece of strong fabric. This is to prevent the felt from stretching or tearing once you have the flowers on your head; it will make the clip sit better.

If you want, once these dries, you can add a second layer of felt on the calico, but this is not necessary.

Prepare the flowers, by chopping off the little bit of stem that protrudes on the back if necessary. This should leave you with an even surface (see photo below)

Once the glue on the felt+calico pieces has dried, grab the felt+calico pieces, and cut them as ovals, so they are smaller than the bottom of the flowers. Make two small cuts along the centre (see photo below)

Grab the hair clips, put them through the two cuts, so the two ends of the clips are on the felt side. Turn them over, and add a thin layer of E6000 over the calico, making sure there is some under the hair clip, and over it too.

Press the side with the glue layer over the bottom of the flower, making sure the felt follows the curved shape of it, and the hair clip also presses against it.

Let it dry thoroughly, and if there’s any white showing on the upper side, you can trim it down, following the shape of the flower.
You are done.