Tag Archives: birthday crown

A Statement Piece – How-To

30 Monday Sep 2013

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A few weeks back my friend Dee Dee sent me to this website – HERE.  Along with the suggestion that we get on that fast!  Just a week or so later my friend Esther received this for her birthday:

photo (11)

It was a sign!  It was really two signs, that I needed to get the glue gun out and make some flower headbands!  I just needed a reason … then I remembered the perfect occasion.  Our friend Tricia’s birthday party was this past weekend.  A few of us couldn’t attend the actual gathering so went Hollywood bar hopping with her instead.  The ladies involved and the location was the perfect storm for gigantic flower headbands!

photo 1A little about me.  I live for “statement pieces.”  When I had a much more exciting life and went out more I would wrap myself in ribbons or a hat or a giant flower or …..   I love it!  What is the point of going out if people aren’t going to stare at you.  That’s my philosophy!

Off to Michael’s I went.  The flowers that were used for my friend Esther’s Frieda Kahlo inspired headband were super fancy roses.  I found them … they were $10 EACH.  I don’t care how pretty the flower is I’m not spending ten bucks on it!  Luckily for me the fall flowers were on sale and it was easy to find a few bundles that were well priced and pretty.  For the birthday girl I went a little fancier and got a softer color.  Me?  I’m not a soft color type of gal!  I want primary colors and I want them to be bold!

photo 5After a quick stop at Rite Aid (or something similar) to grab a bundle of basic headbands I headed back to my house to get the glue gun turned on.  Then I watched the premiere episode of Grey’s Anatomy that I had recorded earlier in the week.  That gave my glue gun approximately 1 1/2 hours to heat up to a temperature that could have the gun second as a spot welder.  I have the old fashion glue gun that spits out molten lava and causes me to scream FUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK on a fairly constant basis while using it.  The instructions on the site say to pull off the photo 4flower head from the stem and cut of the little stem that is left.  Don’t do that.  That little stem is what holds everything together.  Do pull off the flower head and just leave it at that.  Then grab your hot glue gun (aka tool of torture) and glob it on the flower.  I had to hold the flower in place, above my head, up to the ceiling fan to get it to set faster.  It is a little bit of a pain in the bum but not horrible.  Just keep piling giant flowers on your headband until you are satisfied.

Oh I forgot …. I covered the headbands with photo 2 (1)a strip of ribbon first.  I figured it would be prettier and would give the flowers something to stick too.  I had purchased a combo pack of headbands so each were a little different.  The ribbon helped unify them plus gave the super skinny headbands more real estate to work with.

After all were made I looked in awe at my creations.  They are BEAUTIFUL and were a big hit.  I was asked by folks more than once that evening where photo 3they could purchase one for themselves or their girlfriend/wife.  Yes they are big.  Yes they are bright.  Yes they are perfection!  Totally worth the multiple burns on my fingers and toe (yes I got hot glue on my toe) and the giant chunk of skin missing from my ring finger (if you get hot glue on you don’t pull it off … I repeat … don’t pull it off).  I’m sure it won’t be the last time you see pictures of me with giant flowers adorning my head like a mysterious fairy crown!

Birthday Crown – How-To

27 Tuesday Aug 2013

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image (8)I suspect you can take one look at the picture of the birthday crown I made for my friend Paul this weekend and think, “got it … no need to tell me how to make it … pretty self-explanatory.”  Alas that would make for a pretty boring “how-to” blog post.

Let’s start from the beginning.  My friend Leslie sent out an invite for a surprise dinner birthday party for her husband, Paul.  As a good guest I rsvp’d and put the info on my calendar.  What I failed to do is read the invite itself.  I’m pretty good at waiting until the last-minute to do that.  During my Saturday morning walk I went through my closet in my head searching for appropriate dinner attire.  I was thinking we were going to a swanky place in Hollywood so something LBD-ish would be good.  I figured out a couple of options and decided I’d wear the one that was cleanest.  Later in the afternoon I was laying on my bed heavy signing at having to squish into a pair of spanx in a few hours.  It was then I finally decided it was time to read the invite.

image (6)Turns out there was no swanky dinner in Hollywood.  This was actually a family friendly dinner at a BBQ joint/sports bar in Burbank.  I mentally stuffed my spanx back in the drawer and got to work.  The new location offered many more options not only for my limited wardrobe but also for special birthday gifts.

Since I have no money (sigh … someone find me a non-sales job … please) I decided I’d make Paul something special.  A birthday crown seemed like the obvious choice.  Looking at this specific royal head-gear you may be thinking, “what egotistical weirdo would want a picture of himself on his head all night?”  The answer is … everyone I know.  We are all pretty happy with ourselves.  To be honest it’s really a shock we don’t walk around with our favorite picture of ourselves plastered to our forehead at all times.  It’s just who we are.  Since it was Paul’s b-day I thought he had the right to actually do just that.

Here is the obvious how to part:

  • I took an appropriate patterned piece of scrap-booking paper.  Stiff-ish kind.  12 x 12 and cut it in half.
  • I didn’t have time to wait for glue and honestly I didn’t really trust it so I taped the two pieces together.  If you plan ahead you could get some of that colored duct tape and use that.
  • photo (6)Using my head as a template I taped up the other side of the crown.  I was really guessing at the correct size.  I figured his head was bigger than mine so went with that.  If you don’t have your subject right there to fit the crown on as you make it I suggest taking along a pair of scissors and more of your tape (scotch or fancy duct) just in case you need to make some last-minute changes.
  • After printing out a picture of the birthday boy and gluing it to the crown I realized the entire thing was a bit too tall.  Learn from my mistake and cut to the desired crown height before piecing together.  I had to take scissors and cut around the top.  Since I used a blade cutting thing to do other other paper cuts the top was a little uneven and not as nice as it could have been.   Tip:  I printed pictures straight from my subjects Facebook page.  I didn’t have any faith that the quality would be any good but I was wrong.  It worked well and I always figure if I use pictures that they posted then they have already approved it for public viewing!
  • I printed out some “diamonds” and a “Happy Birthday” message on blue scrapbooking paper, cut it all out, and glued it all down (I used normal glue).
  • Finally I had to control myself from covering the entire thing in sparkles.   Since it was for a man I figured he wouldn’t be too happy as pixie dust rained down on him from the sparkly crown on his head.  To give it a little more shine I took some sparkle star paper and made a small strip to decorate the bottom of the crown.

image (7)TA DA!  There you go.  Of course you can go crazy decorating your birthday crown and I highly suggest sparkles for anyone that can handle it!  If you don’t have the same type of friends I do you can always swap out the picture for a number or even a big ol’ diamond.

To finish off Paul’s present I made him a magnet from a family photo (when I gave it to him the glue was dry unlike when I took the picture here).  Unfortunately two of his children aren’t in the picture.  I just couldn’t find one on Facebook with all of them.  I suggest they sit down for a Wendy picture-taking session … STAT!

(Yes I made everyone at the party put the crown on and took a picture of them.  I did miss out on 3 of the kids.  They were in power sugar mode and I couldn’t pin them down long enough!)