Choose Your Flower Barette

I’ve been seeing a lot of flowers in hair lately -and not just among little girls! It seems like all the cool adults are pinning their hair back with roses and plumeria and hibiscus. Unlike some trends (skinny jeans, I’m looking at you :P) this is one I’m more than happy to jump on board with.

Aloha!

Gosh, I’ve gotten freckly since last year. I should probably take my friend’s advice and get a moisturizer with a good SPF rating to protect my face from the constant, blazing Death Sun around here. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to make some flowers for my hair.

All you need is some empty barrettes, like so:

Barrettes!

and some felt, a needle and thread, and some embroidery floss. (Colored thread could be substituted.) Here are the templates I’ve made:

Click for the pdf!

Click the picture for the pdf. That word that got cut off on the top – that says ‘Stamen.’  That’s for the hibiscus.

The pieces.

So, you cut out your pieces. (You can see that I didn’t have enough felt to make the second piece in one unbroken chunk, but the way I pieced the two together, it won’t be visible from the front. I’m not sure whether this speaks to my poor planning, or my frugality. I’m gonna say it’s probably both.)

The back

So, you sew your strap to the back of your back piece…

The front!

sew and embroider details onto the front piece…

Ta-da!

and sew the pieces together.

Slip it in!

Then, you just slip your barrette through the strap, and you’re good to go! It’s not permanently attached, so you can switch it out as often as you like. You could also slide it onto a thin headband, or a bobby pin, so it’s very versatile.

Lovely!

The hibiscus is a little different: I assembled it as described in this tutorial except I did not glue the stamen. I rolled it up and sewed it so that it would stay. I also did not make a separate back piece to sew the strap to, I just hid the stitches in the texture of the petals so that it wouldn’t show through on the front.

This was a really fun project!

Swap-dwhoop!

Do you remember when I posted about whoopdwhoop? (To sum up: it’s a site where you can swap your handmade things for points to “buy” handmade things from someone else.) Yesterday I received my first item through the site.

Pretty!

Thanks Alicia! Isn’t it cute? (The half-used crayons are ours, Max insisted on filling the whole thing up as soon as I explained what it was for.) It’s just like something I would make for my kids, if I had my sewing machine unpacked and could sew much more neatly than I do. Completely filled, it rolls up to be bigger than a cell phone, but smaller than a soda can – the perfect size for slipping into my purse for entertaining the kids on the go.

If there's one thing I can do, it's tie a bow!

As you can see, the back is made of an adorable circus fabric to coordinate with the circusy words on the inside:

It's the circus!

Interested? I was initially dubious about the format, but it seems to be working very well. Now that more people are joining, there’s a larger variety of items there, too. Come check out the things I’m offering to swap! (I really need to list a few more pieces.) Don’t have an account? Sign up here!

Happy Children’s Day

(I think it’s a holiday worth adopting.) We spent the morning at the zoo with the ragtag band that made me a mother.

Sweat! All day long!

Boy, it was hot. It’s hard to believe that one year ago today, we were here:

Yeah, and it wasn't hot there either!

It is just so far away. I miss a lot of things about Japan, and the fact that I don’t think we ever hit 90 degrees there is definitely one of them. (Seriously, I think I sunburned my face despite wearing a sunhat with a brim that is bigger around than a pizza pan.)

Oh, well. Want to do something for Children’s Day? Why not…

I hope you enjoy your day!