Flower Antennae Headband
First of all, thanks so much for all the love on the Large Wing Butterfly Costume tutorial that I shared earlier this week. I really had so much fun making those 2 costumes for my girls….and was so thrilled with how they turned out!
I’m a mean mom and won’t let me kids actually wear and play around in their costumes until Halloween (or if we have a Halloween party a few days before)….but they keep begging to just wear the wings to flap around in. Nope—-they have to wait! And then after October 31st, they can add it to the dress-up bin and play with them any time they want! :)
Anyway, I didn’t include the antennae headband with the Butterfly Costume tutorial and many of you requested that I show you how. Sure! I’m so glad you liked them too….I really think it helps polish off the whole costume! So today, I’ll show you just how simple it is to make a Flower Antennae Headband!
The headbands are actually pretty inexpensive to make…..and are mostly made from felt.
They are attached to some floral wire that comes covered in brown paper….and two little pom-pom antennae.
There’s an elastic hairband that holds the wire closed in the back and helps the headband to sit snugly on the head.
I put these headbands together last minute, as a kind of afterthought…..but am thrilled with how they turned out! They are vibrant and fun — and could be used with or without the butterfly costume, for all sorts of imaginative play!
They really do complete the Large Wing Butterfly Costumes that I made for Elli and Chloe….and I couldn’t be happier with how the whole costume turned out! :)
Okay, let me show you how this Flower Antennae Headband is made!
Okay, here’s another peek at both headbands, all complete.
I’ll show you how I made each of the different flowers and give you the dimensions I used for each (which fit together nicely)……but you can adjust the sizing as needed, add different types, attach more flowers all the way around, whatever you want!
Okay, this is probably the easiest flower of them all…..but also so full and pretty!
First, cut a rectangle of felt, that’s 9×3 inches…
Add a thin line of hot glue along one of the long edges of the rectangle.
Fold in half, lining up the tow long edges.
Cut narrow strips along the folded edge of the rectangle, stopping about 1/4 inch before the glued edge.
Begin rolling the strip of felt, keeping it nice and tight as you roll….adding little dots of glue here and there to help keep it in place.
Once you finish rolling, add one more dot of glue to keep the entire thing in place.
Okay, so this flower is fun because of the two tones but you could also keep it all the same color. Either way, the outer and inner section of this flower make it fun to look at!
First, you need 11-12 (or more) little hearts cut from felt. If you need a starting point, my hearts are about 1 1/2 inches tall and about 1 3/4 inches wide. But if you’re slightly different in size from that, it’s okay.
Add a little dot of glue towards the bottom of the heart.
Fold it in half and pinch until glue is dry.
Repeat with all of your heart pieces.
Start placing your folded hearts together at the tip, with the folds facing the same way. Keep the glue low to allow the petals to spread apart later.
Continue gluing the base of each piece together, around in to a circle…
And then glue the last two pieces together, completely the circle.
Set the petal piece portion of the flower aside and then create a mini Loopy Flower for the center.
Cut a rectangle that is 5×1.5 inches.
Turn it into a Loopy Flower, just like the instructions above…
Place the loopy portion in the center of the heart petals with hot glue.
This flower is made out of one piece of fabric and gives a nice variation to the collection of flowers.
Start with a circle piece of felt, about 7 inches in diameter.
Trim off the edges, creating scallops.
Create a spiral shape out of your circle, cutting scallops the entire way, instead of just a straight line. Try to keep your scallop sizes the same as the outer scallops from the last step.
Starting with the very center of the spiral piece, start winding the felt around each other, at an angle, creating your flower shape.
Continue until the entire flower is wound up. Then cut an additional circle of felt about the same size as the bottom of the flower, add some hot glue….
…then place it on the bottom of the flower, to help keep all the layers in place.
Okay, I’m terrible at coming up with names….but just go with it. And I don’t have a nice up close picture of this flower on the blue headband….grrrrrrr, but you can kind of see it here….it’s the little yellow one all the way to the left.
But it’s also on the the pink and orange headband, in 2 different sizes. It’s the little yellow one and the raspberry pink one (just to give you a better view of how this style looks).
For the smaller yellow Fluffy Flowers (on the blue headband), cut 3 circles that are 2 1/4 inches in diameter.
Fold one of the circles in half.
Then fold it over 1/3 of the way…
….and then fold the remaining 1/3 under to the back.
This is what it will look like from the tip end.
Add little dots of glue to help hold the 2 folds in place from the last 2 steps.
Repeat with the other 2 circles.
Grab 2 of the section and glue them together, with one piece turned a 1/4 turn.
Add the 3rd piece, in whatever direction looks best, to kind of create a nice full and round-ish shaped flower.
Here’s a look from the bottom…
That’s it. All of the flower styles that I used on my headband……but you could really use any style you’d like. Once you have them all complete, it’s time to attach them to a headband.
. . . . .
To create the base of the headband, I bought some paper stem wire (found in the flower arranging section at the craft store) and rounded it into a circle shape, to fit around the head.
I cut a second piece in half and used them as the antenna. I wrapped one end of both pieces around the base of the headband, as tightly as I could, and then added dots of glue to help hold the antenna in place. Then I hot glued each of the flowers onto the base of the headband, facing outward, hiding the twisted section of each of the antenna.
Next I added a little pom-pom to the end of each antenna with hot glue.
Finally, I grabbed a large hairband (from my bathroom drawer) and twisted one end of the wire base to the hairband and then measured the headband onto my daughter’s head to see how much I needed to twist the other end of the wire. This gives the headband some stretch and helps hold into onto the head. Works perfectly!
And that’s it! Your Flower Antennae Headband is complete! And ready to be worn with the Large Wing Butterfly Costume!!!
Enjoy!
-Ashley
Hi, I’m Ashley—the DIY-enthusiast behind this crazy blog!
