Baby Flower Headbands & Clips
If there are babies or young girls on your gift list this year, these go together quick and easy–and are cute and trendy to boot!
Here’s what you need to get going:
- Some double pronged salon clips. I bought mine at a local hair supply store, a box of 80 for about $6.
- Glue Gun and glue sticks
- 3/8″ ribbon. I used grosgrain because I like it. Twill tape works well too. Satin is a little hard to work with, and with organza, you’ll likely get burned with the glue coming through. If you’re like me you might get burned anyway.
- Fake flowers. There are several ways to acquire these. Scrapbook stores sell them as embellishments, but make sure you’re getting fabric/felt ones, not paper. You can also buy stems of flowers at a craft store and take them apart. Finally, you can buy felt squares (they were 25 cents a piece at my local JoAnn’s) and cut out your own flowers.
- Flower middles. These can be anything from buttons, to little rhinestones, to scrapbooking brads. Use your imagination. I like using brads to hold all the layers together, and then gluing buttons or rhinestones on top.
Here’s how to do it:
- First, cover the alligator clip with ribbon. Using the glue gun, start on the underside of the clip (that’s the straight side, without any angles). Glue the edge of the ribbon down then fold it over to continue covering the clip. This gives a nice folded edge look, that won’t fray. Glue the ribbon all the way around the clip, stopping on the underside of the top set of prongs. The bottom set will remain exposed so that we can clip it to things later.
- Assemble your flowers. Combine different sizes, colors, and shapes for visual interest. Also, keep in mind what colors are popular or favorites for children’s clothing. I had fun with mine and made some seasonal, even. Try to incorporate 3 or 4 layers so that the flower has some depth.
- Put the layers together with a brad, or glue them together with your hot glue gun (careful, or your fingers will look like mine).
- Add some flair by putting glitter, rhinestones, buttons, fuzzy yarn, or brads. I used some glitter glue on a few of the petals and it turned out really cute.
- Glue the flower to the alligator clip you covered earlier. Try to align the clip over any brad prongs so that they don’t catch hair.
You’re done with the flowers, now on to the headbands. I use crocheted baby headbands that I bought online. I’ve also seen them in boutiques and even a grocery store or two. They are cute, and stretchy and feminine, and the alligator clips can clip right into the fabric.
Alternately, you can make headbands out of knee-high nylons. Just take the nylon, cut off the toe and the ribbing at the top. Now, take the long middle part of the nylon and glue the two cut ends together, making a loop out of the remaining sock. Then, you can make a loop (with the ribbing) to wrap around the area you just glued together. Leave part of it not glued down so that you can slip the alligator clip in, and voila! A cute, interchangeable headband!
P.S. If you’d like to scrap the headband idea and just make some cute flowers to clip in hair (these work better for older girls, not babies), you can always assemble the flowers as above, but instead of using alligator clips, use the spring loaded clips. Again, purchaseable at a well stocked craft store.
Happy headbanding!
~April~
5 Things I’m Thankful For…
…at this very moment…
1) A sister who brings over Turkey Cupcakes–they look like turkeys, they taste like chocolate–that are so, so cute–I couldn’t let anyone eat them until we got a picture. Plus, I figured if I could distract everyone long enough…I wouldn’t have to share. Heh, heh, heh…
2) A big black cat named Beany, that sleeps at the foot of my bed–the far right side of the foot of my bed so that I can still move my feet if I want to OR scoot my feet under him to keep them extra toasty. Yeah…he’s a good sport.
3) Thanksgiving decorations all over the place. Laurie–the cupcake sister–made the pilgrims for me a billion years ago.
The turkey bailed into my cart at JoAnn’s last year.
4) The piles on my ridiculous desk. So much potential for fun stuff. I can’t wait to sort them out and see what’s in there. I must point out…this s not a mess. I mean it. This is total order in my world.
5) “Thing 1” and “Thing 2.” The squishyist and most magnamonious babies in the world. It’s quite possible that I made both of those words up. If so…don’t tell me. They are perfect for my needs–thank you.
“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice.”
~Meister Eckhart
A Pile Of Leaves
“We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things. . . but there are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.”
~James Carroll
The Bald Kid’s Frankenstein
Nothing beats a good book. Everybody knows that…
Our family book club finished the Chocolate Touch last week, and promptly moved on to Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Ewwwww…Not so sure how I’m feeling about that. Perhaps I’ve shared with you my sentiments on severed body parts. And now, the fact that some nutty guy has sewn a bunch of them together, hooked up some jumper cables to the dead dude and has him stomping around scaring people doesn’t make me feel any better. I know, I know…I haven’t read it yet, so how can I possibly judge? Right?
Yeah, well, maybe I haven’t read the book, but I have seen the movie. Ok, not the real movie, but the Abbott and Costello version and that’s good enough for me. The monster does have some pretty cool boots but the stitches in his head really creep me out. And his eyes…why doesn’t he open his eyes? If he did, maybe he could put his arms down and walk like a normal…ummm…dead guy and not draw so much attention to himself.
Ok, I admit it. I’m stalling. But I have good reason to. It all stems from the fact that Frankenstein and I go waaay back. Back before most people reading this were even born.
Yeah, I’m that old.
Anyway…so I have this big brother, right? My sister and I share a room with him and he has a few strange hobbies.
1. He collects bugs, and moths and spiders and pins them to a styrofoam block…sometimes while they are still kicking. Vile.
2. He saves dead things in the patio freezer–like an old owl and a huge tarantula because someday, he’s going to be a taxidermist and he wants to be ready, so he’s saving up. Disgusting.
3. He has a thing for building toy models. Not car models, or plane models, ohhh nooo. The only kind he is interested in are the monsters. He has Dracula-with blood running down his face. He has Wolfman-with his dirty, pointy teeth. He has Creature from the Black Lagoon–with green and silver claws. All very, very nasty.
But the dumb model that really kept me awake at night, the one that I couldn’t take my eyes off when I was in the room alone, the one that looked like he was gonna swagger right off that ledge and pinch me in the neck with his creepy out stretched hands, was Frankinstein. Of course he was carefully arranged on a shelf right across from my bed. The better to see him with.
Photo from IMDB
You know, I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was a silly piece of plastic, glued together and painted by my morbid brother…Igor. But the thing that got me, that kept me wondering and tossing in my little seven-year-old sleep, was the fact that my brother…Boris, loved to tell me that someday when he had enough money, he was going to go down to the hobby shop and buy a motor. He was going to put that motor in old Frankie-boy’s back and bring him to life where he could promptly take good care of any annoying little sisters that might happen along. No jumper cables needed. Listen, my brother was Vlad the Impaler so, yeah, I believed him. OK maybe I was stupid.
At any rate, what it boils down to is that Dr. Frankenstein’s monster and I are not pals. Not even close. But I’ll read the dang book, because it’s Rhen’s tough-guy choice and I want to be a sport. So it better be good. But when it’s my turn to choose, you better believe, I’m gonna make them all read Little Women or something so girly that their toenails curl up.
Because nothing beats a good book. Everybody know that…