DIY Flower Crown

I was so excited to learn that this month’s Michael’s Maker’s Challenge was to create something with Michael’s new Floral Market, because my daughter Lyla and I have been wanting to make a pretty flower crown for a long time. I was originally planning on making a few different ones with just a handful of flowers each, but we ended out making a bigger one that used lots of different flowers. Fortunately, I got a lot of different flowers and I will be making some more flower crowns in the near future!

In the end, it was a little harder to attach the flowers to the crown than I expected, so I had to do it all myself. However, Lyla helped me pick out flowers and choose which order they went in. This would be such a fun activity to do with friends, or something special you can make for/with your daughter, or even just something you make for yourself. It’s definitely an awesome photo prop!

What you need:

1. Flowers! I picked out a mix of larger and smaller flowers and I stuck with a pink and white color scheme. Michael’s really does have an amazing selection!

2. Greenery – I like the almost succulent looking leaves I found. They really filled in the crown well.

3. Floral wire (I used 22 gage)

4. Floral tape

5. Wire cutters (I used some I had from making jewelry)

What you do:

1. Start by making a large wire circle slightly larger than you need. I wrapped the wire around two times and cut the end with my jewelry cutters. Wrap the end around the other wire so that it’s secure. You could wrap the wire around more times for a thicker band, but I found that mine was definitely sturdy enough.

2. Now wrap the entire circle in floral tape. I had never used this kind of tape before this past summer (at the Michael’s Makers Summit), and it’s really neat stuff. There isn’t a front side or a back side, and you have to stretch the tape a little bit in order to make it sticky. So the trick is to wrap and pull on the tape a little bit as you go. I also found it was easier to work with smaller pieces of tape (less than a foot).

3. Prepare your flowers. I had originally planned on leaving some of the leaves that came on the flowers’ stems on, but in the end they usually got in the way. Most of the flowers have wire inside, which makes them easy to bend, but you also really need some sort of wire cutters to cut through the stems. Also prepare your greens. The greens I used (shown above) just pulled right off the stems and I didn’t have to cut them at all.

4. Start attaching flowers. Use floral tape to wrap around the stem of a flower a few times until it feels secure. Since you will keep wrapping more and more flowers as you go, you don’t necessarily need to attach the stem in multiple places at first.

5. Keep adding more flowers, with greenery pieces in between. The stem will get thicker and thicker as you add more flowers. You could just add a couple of flowers to one side, create a thick headband style (like we did), or make a thick flowery crown that goes all the way around.

It took me a little longer than I had expected to make this, but now that I’ve practiced a little bit I could make another one much faster. And Lyla is also requesting one that is a little less fancy for her to wear to school. Haha, I guess we would have to call it her everyday flower crown.

Also, did you hear about the AMAZING giveaway that Michael’s has going on right now through March 26, 2016? Basically all you have to do is upload a photo of a personalized project that you made and you’ll be entered to win an all expense paid trip to the Michael’s Maker’s Summit. Plus there will be 50 winners! Find out more and read the contest rules here.

 

Be sure to check out these other awesome spring projects from the Michael’s Makers.