french beaded flower hair clip

last time i said i'd have a go at making a hair clip based on the french beaded flower in the crafty creatives birthday box - and here it is!

i used the pretty pink bead mix that came with the cc birthday box. this time i made a slightly smaller flower; the petals each have five beads in the middle, and two loops of beads around. i layered five petals on top of another five petals, and the stamen is made from twisting five groups of seven beads on one piece of wire. 

as i needed to to attach the flower to the clip, instead of twisting the wires from the petals and stamen together to make a stem as before, i twisted the first wire into a circle, and then twisted each one onto and around the circle, so that the flower sat on a ring of twisted wire. this was very fiddly!

i sewed a small circle of felt (also from the cc birthday box!) onto the second hair clip that came with the cc glamour box kit. i sewed another circle the same size onto the back of the flower, threading through the wire and beads to fix it as securely as possible. then i sewed two pieces of felt together using blanket stitch, to attach the clip to the flower.

what do you think? i was really pleased with how it turned out and and will be wearing it!

i really enjoyed making these flowers, and so i made a fourth one! this time i used some of the black beads left over from making the vintage style hair slip:

these black beads are a little bigger than the blue and pink ones that came with the kit, so i used three beads in the centre of the petals, and two loops around. i twisted groups of four beads together for the stamens. i made this one flat again so that it could be made into a similar hair clip as above.

i did manage to tear myself away from making beaded flowers long enough to have a stab at making the felt flower!

the method of creating the flower shape is simple but really effective. i did have a bit of trouble with this though, and i must be a bad workman, because i'm going to blame the glue! i used an all purpose glue that said it can be used with felt, but i found that the felt didn't want to stick together, and absorbed a lot of glue, so it ended up very hard! i stuck another bit of felt (this time i used double-sided sticky tape!) to the bottom of the flower to hide the really hard gluey bits! i don't think it will hold for long!

if i make another one of these (and if haven't acquired a glue gun before i do!) i think i'll try stitching it together rather than gluing it to see how that turns out.

anyway, here is the finished felt flower looking rather soft-focussed and pretty hanging out with some of my plants!