How to make a tribal flowery head piece. Or at least, how I did it.
All righty, roya_spirit, here's how I made my headgarden! I drew heavily on my experience as a florist's shop girl for this piece. Although the florist never let me build an arrangement, I paid a lot of attention to how she built her arrangements and the prinicples of design she used.
First and foremost, my workspace-cum-coffeetable, complete with normal detritus of my life:
As you can see, I trimmed the flowers and leaves from their wire stems, and scattered them somewhat randomly according to their size/length. Also, a pair of wire-cutters proved more useful than scissors, and a spool of green cotton-wrapped florist's wire is essential. The mirror in the upper right is for constantly checking how the piece really looks on my head as I build it. The actual headpiece was already half-constructed at this point, and it's the large blue flower closest to the bottom edge of the table. I'm using a headband I found for a buck somewhere, which has an open-wire construction.
Here's a shot of the half I already began, from behind/inside. You can see how I've used the wire (sticking out of the side) to wrap the flower stems to the headband.
Also, good detail shot of the headband I'm using; the type of headband was what caused me to choose it. I imagine any broad headband with a holey design would do.
A shot of that half, from the front, and against a neutral background. As I built it, I discovered I had to think more 3-D, and fill out the piece with small flowers so it would look good from all angles.
I've begun the other side, here, and only a few flowers are on so far. I've added my tall elements first, so I can make the bottom part, closer to my ear, "heavier" as I continue the build.
That's the same bundle I was working on, only from the inside.
As I go, I mark the comparative "weights" of both sides of the headpiece, trying to keep them in balance. Also, I try to keep the most flowers at the bottom, around my ear, to keep a more natural look. Sometimes, a single flower is all that's needed to fill out an otherwise bare-looking area. I also use the leaves of the flowers, to fill out and provide a "background", as it were, to the piece. I discovered in process that if you don't use the leaves, the flowers look more stale and artifical, and the leaves help the colors pop.
Here's that same bundle, interior shot. If you're concerned about the wire and flower stems getting caught in your hair, consider lining the headband with ribbons, or scraps from one of your costumes, like I did. I used the tie-strings from the sari belt bases I got for my bell belt (photo from in-process costume post), that you can see dangling from my hips here. (Ignore the scary face.)
I simply stitched them to the interior of the headband, covering the stems and wire, and providing a better backing for the original wire-and-jewels of the headband to show up against my hair. The whole process took about an hour and a half.
Ta-da! Finished! Sorry about the slight blurriness, our camera's a bit wonky at times.
(I still think it looks cuter on my dog.)
First and foremost, my workspace-cum-coffeetable, complete with normal detritus of my life:
As you can see, I trimmed the flowers and leaves from their wire stems, and scattered them somewhat randomly according to their size/length. Also, a pair of wire-cutters proved more useful than scissors, and a spool of green cotton-wrapped florist's wire is essential. The mirror in the upper right is for constantly checking how the piece really looks on my head as I build it. The actual headpiece was already half-constructed at this point, and it's the large blue flower closest to the bottom edge of the table. I'm using a headband I found for a buck somewhere, which has an open-wire construction.
Here's a shot of the half I already began, from behind/inside. You can see how I've used the wire (sticking out of the side) to wrap the flower stems to the headband.
Also, good detail shot of the headband I'm using; the type of headband was what caused me to choose it. I imagine any broad headband with a holey design would do.
A shot of that half, from the front, and against a neutral background. As I built it, I discovered I had to think more 3-D, and fill out the piece with small flowers so it would look good from all angles.
I've begun the other side, here, and only a few flowers are on so far. I've added my tall elements first, so I can make the bottom part, closer to my ear, "heavier" as I continue the build.
That's the same bundle I was working on, only from the inside.
As I go, I mark the comparative "weights" of both sides of the headpiece, trying to keep them in balance. Also, I try to keep the most flowers at the bottom, around my ear, to keep a more natural look. Sometimes, a single flower is all that's needed to fill out an otherwise bare-looking area. I also use the leaves of the flowers, to fill out and provide a "background", as it were, to the piece. I discovered in process that if you don't use the leaves, the flowers look more stale and artifical, and the leaves help the colors pop.
Here's that same bundle, interior shot. If you're concerned about the wire and flower stems getting caught in your hair, consider lining the headband with ribbons, or scraps from one of your costumes, like I did. I used the tie-strings from the sari belt bases I got for my bell belt (photo from in-process costume post), that you can see dangling from my hips here. (Ignore the scary face.)
I simply stitched them to the interior of the headband, covering the stems and wire, and providing a better backing for the original wire-and-jewels of the headband to show up against my hair. The whole process took about an hour and a half.
Ta-da! Finished! Sorry about the slight blurriness, our camera's a bit wonky at times.
(I still think it looks cuter on my dog.)