Super Cute (and Easy) Hair Flowers

If you've seen me or Stacey or Elizabeth around lately, you might have noticed our unique hair accessories. The June/July issue of ReadyMade gives great instructions on how to turn ugly old polyester blouses into little flowers you can glue to a headband or hair clip. I wasn't able to find the instructions on their website so here is what we did!

Supplies:
Polyester fabric
Medium sized candle
Tongs
Beads or buttons
Needle and thread
Headbands, hair clips, pins, etc.


Stacey and I found these HUGE bags of polyester squares from the Bethesda Thrift Store for 39 cents each! Some of the colors and patterns are really cute and surprisingly, some of the ugly 70's patterns turned into pretty flowers.




First, pick some pattern/color combos you like or make a solid flower, those turn out nicely too. Then, cut three or four circles with the largest being about 3" to 3.5" in diameter. Size and amount of circles really depends on how large and full you want your flower to be. I recommend that the smallest circle not be smaller than 1" because when the polyester burns smaller circles can turn out pretty wonky.



You should probably head outside for the second part which is burning your little circles. Light a candle and hold the polyester circle over the flame with the tongs until the edges start to curl. You will need to rotate the circle to get an all over curl that makes the flower look more realistic. We found that the way the polyester curls really varies so you might need to play with it for a little while until you get what you want.

After you burn the circles, you can arrange them until they fit nicely together and sew them through the middle. Thread a bead or button into the center of the flower and secure the knot in the back.

We used a hot glue gun to attach the flowers to little clips which worked pretty well. The other day when I was wearing one of the flowers in my hair, it came unglued and I just thought I would just change the flowers on the clip instead of buying a ton of clips for the 20 or so flowers I made.



These coral ones are my favorite because I think they almost look like a real poppies! I plan on attaching them to a headband as soon as Walgreens has the kind I like in stock. I love the thin, Goody Ouchless headbands. They really are ouchless and they don't overwhelm my head.

So, ta-da! I also think these simple flowers make great gifts. You could turn them into brooches and pin them to your jacket in the fall. Once I get some more materials, I will probably make a nice statement necklace. I like to wear them at the nape of my neck wear I tuck in my mullet hairs because I am too frugal to get a haircut until I absolutely need one.

Reed's Un-Birthday

Today was my younger brother Reed's Sweet Sixteen. Reed likes to complain that he always gets the shaft when it comes to birthdays. Mostly, I think he's exaggerating: last year was his "Golden Birthday" so he got quite a bit of money from Mom, an ice cream cake with a topping bar and even a present from my boyfriend. I don't think that's such a bad deal.

This year, however, things couldn't be worse. Tonight we were supposed to have Mom's BBQ ribs, corn on the cob and roasted baby potatoes (pretty much everyone's favorite meal over here) but Mom woke up pretty sick. The saving grace of the day should have been the homemade birthday cake I made but it was a disaster.

Reed wanted a dark chocolate cake with white chocolate incorporated somehow. I hate white chocolate but I went for it anyway. I am a firm believer in using the recipe on the back of the box. If Nestle says this is how you make chocolate chip cookies, this is how you make chocolate chip cookies.

When I make regular chocolate cake, I usually use the recipe on the back of the Hershey's Cocoa Powder so I found the same recipe for dark chocolate cake on the wrapper for Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder.



I do not believe there is anything wrong with the recipe. The grave error occurred when I tried to improvise and use the white chocolate chips. The other day I made a chocolate fudge sauce for my banana dessert so I thought I would use the same recipe to make a white chocolate sauce for the cake. It turned out well but when I tried pouring it over the bottom layer of the cake ( I only intended to use it as filling) I poured too much and the poor cake was floating in a sea of white chocolate fondue.

I attempted to rescue the cake but transferring it to a different cake plate only made it crumble. It was weighed down by the white chocolate. I put the second layer on top and tried to glue everything together with frosting. Too much frosting.



The foundation was so crumbly and weak that the cake fell slowly over 25 minutes. We lit it with a candle and resolved to have Reed's real birthday tomorrow. To top it all off, it was disgustingly rich and sweet. Reed and I couldn't even eat it although Seth and Ian kept asking for seconds.

I think I will stick to the recipe tomorrow when I make black tie cupcakes.