How To Do Things: Floral Crown

Good evening!

So I have wanted to start crafting, baking, knitting, doing my own makeup in interesting ways, etc. for a while now. Essentially, I am interested in doing things.

The problem with doing things is 

1. I rarely have time because I have class and 

2. I lack the talent to do most things.

Fortunately, the world has Pinterest and countless YouTube and blog tutorials for pretty much everything. Plus, they are always as easy as 1, 2, 3. You know: step 1 is gather your supplies, step 2 is do whatever you're trying to do, and step 3 is show off your awesome whatever to all of your friends and family (or just take a bunch of pictures and make a blog post about it).

If you cannot see what I am getting at, the internet (as awesome as it is), makes a fatal flaw: it assumes we already are good at doing things. But, really, if I was already good at doing whatever, why would I bother looking up a tutorial? I mean, did it really only take the original person 3 steps? Because it takes me like 50 to do some of the same simple activities and only 37 led to a total failure, which means they at least left out 13 or so steps. This gave me an idea: why don't I try to do things and give you all the steps the tutorials left out, like the fact that no one already owns half the stuff that the tutorials claim that you just have around the house.

So today I am going to tell you all about making a flower crown, because I like flower crowns and want it to be socially acceptable to wear one (which will become a reality if you make one and wear it, too).

How to make a flower crown:

• Pick the busiest week possible to decide to do this craft, preferably a finals week or just a really stressful week in general.
• Whine about how you never get to do anything fun to anyone who will listen.
• Decide to look at the craft store's coupons anyway, preferably at 1 am (when it seems like the best idea)
• Realize that this day is the last possible day to take advantage of their 60% off sale (fortunately, you have finished your last final, or other super stressful activity)
• Be financially responsible: pick out the flowers that you want for your floral crown online ahead of time, you do not want to go to the store and be overwhelmed.
• Go to the store and see this:

Totally overwhelming aisle of silk flowers,

• Realize that you are never going to find the flowers that you originally wanted.
• Pick out new flowers and become completely and totally attached to these inanimate objects.
• Find the flowers you originally wanted to purchase (remember, you are still attached to the flowers that you already found, but also the ones that you found online).
• Decide that it is a great idea to make 6 flower crowns. Because...they're 60% off?
• Decide not to buy floral wire because you know you already have some and you will not need it anyway (By the way, you definitely need it. Buy it now. Really. I promise. You will see why in a minute).
• Go to the check out counter, talk with the woman working at the check out counter about shoes and wedding planning.
• Realize that she is actually engaged and hide your left hand for the rest of the conversation because you are an awkward human being.
• Pay and leave; while driving decide that this should become a blog post.
• Get home and see how many flowers that you bought:

So many flowers.

• Decide to make your flower crown using the "daisy chain" method.
• Google "How to daisy chain."
• Choose not to look at the Urban Dictionary definition (you know it will be gross anyway).
• Learn how people make daisy flower crowns with real flowers, it seems applicable to silk flowers.
• Cut the daisy, like this:

Surprisingly violent.

Cut off the leaf things and it will look like this.

• Now, with daisy chaining, you simply cut a slit towards the bottom of the flower; I thought it would be brilliant to use a seam ripper for this. Getting it to poke through was surprisingly easy. Making a slit was pretty much impossible.

Shockingly (sarcasm), this method failed because plastic and real plants are not the same.

• Give up on this method (preferably after your boyfriend notices what you are doing and as nicely as possible tells you that your idea is not as awesome as you originally thought). You [I] have a tried and true method for making flower crowns anyway. Ok, you [I] have only made one. But, that one time you [I] made a flower crown, Hello Luvvy (here is their much better tutorial) used your [my] picture on Instagram:

Fun fact: this is a blurry picture of what I looked like last year.

• Measure your head and bend floral wire into the shape around your head where you want it to sit (or skip measuring it, just bend it).

It'll look like this.

Mine fit like this.

• You will notice mine needed two pieces of floral wire and I twisted them together; hot glue could probably work to secure it, too.
• Next, give up on those daisies. Clearly, it was their fault for your previous failure. Move on to a different flower.
• Behead these new flowers; mine could just pop off:

Before...

Pop!

• Cut really close to the silk flower part:

Like this.

It will look like this.

• Hot glue the flower to the floral wire.

You probably should craft on a table or something... The spiral on the bed method worked for me, so, there's that...

You can kind of see the hot glue here. You can also see where a plastic flower stem scratched me. This craft may seem dainty, but it is super dangerous. Consider yourself warned.

Finished Product! (Just kidding. I went back and added one more yellow flower that night. It was even across, but the uneven pattern made it look uneven. So that had to be fixed. You can just do it right in the first place.)

• Now go show off! You look great!

Go out, craft, take pictures, and let me know how it goes!

Best,

Rachel