For my first day as an intern at Floriography Flowers, we ran a booth at Nomadic Yoga Festival in Albuquerque, NM at The Yards. One of our activities at our booth was to make a flower crown, I prefer to call the ones we made flower headbands. I say headband because ours did not fully wrap around one's head, rather sat on top of one's head and had a beautiful ribbon tying itself around one's head. I found myself preferring the headband because it wasn't as large and was more simple and elegant. We also decided on headbands because we wanted the customers to be able to do their yoga classes with their flower headbands - which many customers were able to do. So if you are looking for a more simple flower crown that you need to stay on, I would encourage trying a flower headband. Below is a How to: make a flower headband for a right handed people.
Step 1: Get all the supplies
1. Flowers & greenery (preferably ones that can last and have long stable stems at least 3 in.)
2. Floral wire
3. Floral tape
4. Floral wire cutters
5. Ribbon (any size works, but large wide ribbon has a beautiful affect after tying it into one's hair)
Step 2: Select your flowers and make piles of them
This step may not be as important for someone who is making one flower headband under no time limit; however, if you are trying to make flower headbands as fast as possible for demanding customers, this step is crucial. For our flower headbands, we pulled two flours. The small white flowers are called Wax Flowers, and the small purple pine cone looking flowers are called Purple Buds on Evergreen. I sat by the two flowers and cut them with floral wire cutters with each stem at least 3 in long. and put them in their respective pile. We decided on only 2 flowers because of the time crunch, wanting the customers to be able to wear them in yoga class, and wanting them to last as long as possible. You can pick any flower(s) you want it is just important to keep in mind the stability of the stem of the flower, and how the flower will look on a flower crown (i.e. not too long or wide of flowers).
Step 3: Take the floral wire and wrap the floral tape around it
This was my first time using floral wire and tape, and it was the hardest step for me to learn. To wrap, you start at the top of the wire and wrap it around once making it a small ball to get the tape on the wire. The floral tape's stickiness is activated by the warmth in your hand. After you have tape on the top of the wire, hold the tape in your right hand with your ring and middle finger in the loop and your thumb and pointer finger stabilizing the flow of tape. Then, grasp the wire in your left hand and start twirling the tape around the wire using your middle and pointer finger on your left hand to spin the tape on the wire. Continue this process until you are at the end of the wire and pull it off. You want the tape to be on as tight and thin as possible. Unfortunately, I was unable to get a photo or video of this process and since it is fairly difficult to explain, I found a video on youtube to help:
Step 4: Make the floral wire into a headband shape with 2 holes at the end
Take your now taped wire and bend the 2 ends of the wire to make a hole at each end, and then wrap the extra wire around the main body of the wire. Try and make sure the size of the wire will fit the size of the head it will be placed on. You can do this by placing it on top of your head and seeing if it is big/small enough. Do not count the two holes at the end, only focus on the main body of the wire.
Step 5: Make a bundle of flowers, stick them on the flower headband, and then tape them down near the bottom of the stem
Before putting the flowers onto your flower crown, it is best in the long run to make a "bundle" of the cluster of flowers you want for that one section. Once you have that bundle in your hand, hold it down on the flower headband (starting at the top, do not completely cover the hole, but try and get as close as you can), and then with the other hand use the floral tape to tightly tape down all the stems. I wrapped the floral tape around the stems at least 3 times to hold the flowers in place. Do not cut the floral tape after you tape down a bundle; rather, keep the tape going until the very end of the crown, then cut it. Make sure each bundle or cluster looks a little different from the previous bundle to give your headband some variety, and try to pack on as many flowers as you can to make it look full and gorgeous! Continue to do this until the end of the headband. Like the top, do not completely cover the whole, but try and get as close as you can and cut the excess stems with floral wire cutters.
Step 6: String ribbon through the two holes at each ends of the headband & put on headband
For our flower headbands, we preferred using wide pink ribbon because it added an artistic, and beautiful touch to girl's hair once they tied it in, and we felt it brought out the colors of the flowers. When you string the ribbon through, you want to make a little dip as pictured above for girls to initially put around their head and then use the access ribbon to then tie a bow. When initially placing the flower headband on your head and ribbon around your head, make sure your flower headband is placed in the exact spot you want it before you tie it. Make sure the ribbon is plenty long as customers can cut it shorter if they want, but we found they liked the long affect with the headbands.
Step 7: Enjoy!
After all your hard work, enjoy! The middle photo is a group of ladies who all bought headbands together and told us they felt like princesses at the royal wedding. That is the goal of flower headbands/crowns after all; to feel beautiful & look like a princess.