Home! And tutorial...

I am back in California! It's very nice to be home.

Anyway, I want to let you listen to a few more songs just to sum-up my Irish/Scottish music spree and then I'll do my hairpin tutorial.

Silly Wizard does a few of my favorite Scottish songs. This one is awesome, but it is better if you listen to it with lyrics otherwise it's a little tricky to understand. This video does include the lyrics in the description area underneath the video if you go to youtube. :-)



And this one...lovely!


And perhaps my favorite. It's not technically Silly Wizard. It's Andy M. Stewert all by himself. If you don't listen to the other songs, listen to this one. And really listen. It's a story...a very sad story.



Okay, so. Hairpins. It's easy! You'll need.
Artificial flowers.
needle and thread.
Beads (optional)
Hair pins or clips of your preference.

Clip the flower off the stem as close as possible without causing it to fall apart.

I've used both kinds of these hairpins, so it boils down to your preference. This particular flower looks really  good with a bead added to the middle and it can really change the look of the flower, depending on the bead color. I went with a little gold bead for this one. 
So, thread your needle and sew through the bottom of the flower, come up through the middle and string on the bead. (That's not as confusing as it sounds. :-) Sew back down, and come up, through the bead, and down again one or two more times, kind of like sewing on a button, to make sure it is secure.

 Now you can sew it to your pin. Basically, through the flower, around the pin. Through the flower, around the pin. Over and over again until you feel like it wont go anywhere. Tie it off.

I put a drop of super glue on it when I'm done, so that it doesn't slip around on my pin and so the thread doesn't wiggle lose.

I've had fun experimenting with different kinds of flowers. Some I love, and some I'm not super wild about. They all do look pretty, though. It's hard to get a flower to not look good in your hair! lol.

Some flowers have more of a plastic base and can be trickier to attach without destroying. Like this one.

had to sort of tack the flower together after cutting it as close as I could. I just went up through the middle and off to the sides a few times to hold everything in place. then I slid my pin under the plastic and the 'leaf' layer and finished sewing till it seemed secure. Again, a drop of glue is a good idea. This flower is definitely prettier in the hair. It's a little 'blah' by itself.

Basically, just experiment and figure out how you like to make them, and what looks are your favorite. You can do this with big flowers too.

I hope you were able to at least get some idea's from this, even if my instructions were lousy. Flowers are such a fun accessory and it can be fairly cheep to make these. Hobby Lobby has a nice flower selection and you can get some really pretty flowers. So, go and try this out!
God Bless!
Amy