Easy loom daisy flower crown

Hello! Today I had my first day back at uni - I can't believe this is my last semester ever!! I only had one class today, but it did go for three hours (gah!). It was totally fun though; I'm doing a cultural studies unit as my elective and for this class we get to spend the entire semester analysing fantasy and sci-fi texts! I'm so, so keen to get properly into it. I decided today to try and blend in with the cool kids on campus who are all wearing '90s fashion (it's everywhere now!) so I made this quick and easy daisy flower crown to wear ^___^

To make it, I wove five daisies using my largest round loom and some white and yellow wool. I have a Hana-Ami loom, which is really easy to use; making this headband took me one viewing of Coraline ~___^ If you click on "Hana-Ami", I've linked to a short video showing what it looks like and how it is used. However, I did my centres a little differently to the all videos I could find; the loom comes with an instruction sheet that shows you different ways to finish off the flowers. It's in Japanese, but there are pictures so you can get the general gist of things. Instead of using the darning needle to sew from the centre of the flower, I used it to tie knots in a circle around the centre. I knotted together four strands of wool with each knot and each knot contains one strand of wool from the previous knot. Hmm. I hope that makes sense. Perhaps I should make a video to show you what I mean, what do you think?

 

I wanted the centres of the daisies to be a solid colour, so after knotting the circle I used my darning needle to criss-cross the yarn through the centre of the flower. The darning needle I got with my loom has a huge eye on it, which makes threading it super easy, but it's not great for filling in the centres. I recommend changing to a smaller darning needle, if you have one handy.

The actual headband is just a length of crocheted chain stitch; I used a 4mm hook and green yarn. The chain stitched wool is about 70cm long, and I left the 15cm tails on each end to ensure I'd have enough yarn to tie my crown around my apparently massive head ~___^ To attach the flowers, I threaded the chain stitch through the massive darning needle and simply stitched through the back of each flower. You can move the daisies around on the chain to ensure they are positioned well, but they don't move about on their own.

This would also make a really cute daisy bunting, and using the smaller looms produces flowers small enough to be worn as jewellery. Daisy chain necklace, anyone?

Since I'm back at uni now, I'll have less time to craft and blog (boo!); but you can always find me on Instagram and Twitter if you want to catch up! ^___^

- Lisa xx

Alien, bee, and WTNV hair clips

Hi! Have you noticed that the 90s are totally back? I went to a 90s themed ice-skating night last week that was totally fun (albeit very very cold and we didn't actually end up skating since it was so overbooked) and while researching what people wore back then I started really regretting getting rid of my massive butterfly clip collection realising that so much of the clothes in the store right now are very 90s inspired! This is probably not a revelation to most of you, but I'm usually pretty out of the fashion loop so it was for me ~___^ I wanted to make something to go with my grunge-inspired outfit, but the only 90s crafts I could find were scrunchies and elastic chokers. And then I remembered how all the cool teenagers in my town had alien jewellery. I was both too young and too uncool to keep up with the trends as they actually happened, but now I finally have some extraterrestrial hair clips. And only 15 years after the nineties ended! ~___^

I made these little guys with white fimo, but if you already had a light green shade of clay then that would save you some painting time later on. Even better would be if you had glow in the dark fimo! I didn't know this existed until just now, and I desperately want some. Anyway, I rolled the fimo into spheres, squished them flat with my palm, and then pinched in the sides to give these aliens some Cumberbatch worthy cheekbones. I squeezed a plastic straw into a more oval shape and pressed it into the clay to create the outlines of the eyes and then baked them in the oven.

 

I painted the heads with Kaisercolour acrylic paint in lime, the eyes with black acrylic, and then gave them a couple of coats of glow in the dark paint. I used Tarzan's Grip to adhere them to the hair clips and then they were done!

 

They do glow, but they have a bit of a streaky look so I think the glowing clay would work much better if you were to make these yourself ^___^

For my 90s outfit, I did my hair in what I seem to remember being called "alien buns" (this is probably entirely wrong though); basically two small buns on the top of your head with the rest of your hair out. My clips weren't dry by the time we left though, so I didn't get to wear them that night. Still, I think they're pretty cute (in a creepy kind of way) so I think I'll still get some wear out of them ^___^

 

I had two hair clip bases left over, so I also made these tiny bee clips. They were ridiculously easy to make! The wooden bees are from the scrap booking section of my local craft store; I just spray painted them silver and glued them to the clip backings.

 

I really like how these look against my hair, they're so pretty and delicate which is a bit different to my normal creations ~___^ These pictures have also reminded me that I need to redye my hair soon! The red that turned my blue into purple has faded out quite quickly ...

 

 

While I do still have purple hair though, this next craft seems especially appropriate!

 

I wear *a lot* of hair bows (that, and the baby face, probably explains why a lot of people assume I'm still a high schooler) and I hadn't yet made a single piece of WTNV fancraft; two birds, one stone, you know?

I made this by crocheting two tubes, one large and one small. I placed the small tube on top of the larger one, and then pinched and sewed them together. I wrapped some yarn around the middle to make it look a bit neater and then sewed on the little Night Vale moon/eye/thing that I made from felt.

 

I sewed this hair snap onto the back and it was done! It makes a rather oversized hair clip ...

But it also functions as a smashing bow tie! ^___^ I can really only wear it this way with button up shirts, but basically it just clips in between the buttons.

 

Scott and I were brainstorming ideas for more WTNV crafts last night, so you may see more of this fandom here soon. I'd recommend listening to the podcast, if you haven't already! And that's it for me tonight, dear readers, so ...

Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

- Lisa xx