Be Sure to Wear Flowers in your Hair...

           For my wedding ceremony I'm wearing a veil.  However, at the reception I wanted to wear a flower in my hair.  I have peonies in my bouquet and thought a pretty peony in my hair would be perfect.  Plus, I'm wearing ivory pearls.  So, I started by looking on etsy, there are lots of options, but some of them seem pretty expensive and I thought i could tackle this project.  Here's an example of a bridal hair flower on etsy that is $82.03.  It's beautiful, but pricey!



My Inspiration!

              To get started I needed some supplies.  I purchased or had the following: 1) A large peony silk flower(got it on sale for about $2.50 at Michael's); 2.) A hot glue gun (already had); 3.) A sewing kit with a needle, thread and scissors ($1.00 at the dollar store); 4.) a single square piece of ivory felt ($0.25 at a fabric store); 5.) A hair comb ($0.25 at a fabric store);  6.) Some light pink tulle (I got it in the extra pieces box at the fabric store for about a $1.00); and 7.) Some matches or a lighter.

              I also got a couple different pearl options for the center of the flower including some pearl beads (which you can see in the picture above) and some pearl buttons which are below.

                        To start, I dismantled the peony by taking off each petal and separating them (you can see how I did that above).  Then, to make the peony the right size for my head I picked the petal that I felt was a good size and folded any larger petals in half.  Then for each layer I pinned those larger petals to the right sized petals.  It looked like this:

           Next, I used a basic back stich to sew the petals together around the center of the flowers using my needle and ivory thread.  Then removed the pins. 
           For the next layer, I decided to incorporate some tulle.  I took my piece of tulle and cut a circle as best I could to fit the flower size.  Whenever you cut tulle you almost certainly get jagged edges.  So, I carefully lit a match and held the edge of the tulle over the match just for a milli-second.  This sealed the edges of the tulle and made it curl up in a really pretty way! Below you can see the tulle curled up and sealed before I put it on the flower.  Then I put another flower petal on top of the tulle and  pinned them together.  Then, I sewed the new layer of tulle and petal to the flower I'd already assembled by stitching them together in the middle.

         I followed the same pattern for each layer of petal and tulle.  As the flower began to form, it took a great shape because it curled in more and the tulle added just a touch of light pink.  Here's an example of the flower about 1/2 way done and a close-up of the inside stiching.

       Once I'd finished this step, the flower looked like this:

       Next, I cut a square of felt that was the size of my hair comb.  I hot-glued the felt to the hair comb's edge, and then sewed it just to be certain it would stay.

       After this, I attached the comb with hot glue and stiching to the back of my prepared flower.  I threw in a piece of tulle at the back to make the flower fold in even more.

        Now, I was ready to finish the pearly middle of the flower.  I'm pretty sure you could do the pearls first and the comb last, but I actually used the felt to sew my pearl buttons into the middle.
       Like I said, I wasn't sure if I should use a pearl buttons or beads.  I went with the buttons and they seemed to work just fine.  I sewed each pearl button into the center of the flower until the stiching in the middle was covered up, and I pulled the thread all the way through the felt in the back.  Then, just to be sure, I put just a little bit of hot glue under the pearl buttons on the top to keep them in place and secured to the center of the flower (buttons can move a little). 
       Here's the final result - the perfect ivory and pink tulle hair flower for me!

Here I am modeling my new hair flower, not the most gorgeous of backdrops (my bathroom) but it works!

The final product!