How To Make A Mixed Floral Headdress

Hello and welcome to Flower Juice. My name is John MacDonald and today I'm going to show you how to make a simple circlet of flowers for maybe like a little flower girl at a wedding. Now this one that we're going to do has got mixed florals but it's up to you really what you want to use. You could do it with just gypsophila and that will give you a totally different look. So the finish will be different depending on the flowers you use but we're going to use a bit of a mix. So I've got some beautiful gypsophila, I've got these little santini chrysanths, I've got some ruscus and some ivy leaves to give us some foliage. We've got some beautiful little spray roses and I've got two different types and we've also used our spray roses the buds as well. I've got a little bit of lisianthus and again the buds for that. So the first thing you need to do is you need to know the measurement of the circumference of the head. Now I didn't have a little girl to measure so I used Janos and this is the measurement that we've got. So just using a ribbon and the best thing you can do with that is actually just tape it to your workbench so you don't lose it because sod's law it will just go curly and it'll disappear. So what we need as a base for this is a wire and I'm going to use a green wire and this is quite a thin one and we're just going to tape that and really you can make it really really light. The problem with that is that it ends up with a lot of movement in the actual circlet so I suppose it depends on the little girl but what I want is I want to have this body of the circlet with a certain thickness and then probably a little bit of wire either end that we can use for attaching. So that is giving us the length that we're going to have overall and now what I want to do is I just want to strengthen this with some thicker wires. So we're going to add another wire in and I'm just taping this in with essentially the the flower tape the Stemtex or Gutteparker. Everyone uses different ones and really you just get comfortable with the one that you like so don't feel that you have to use the one that I'm using if you prefer using white or you prefer using paper then that's fine that's not a problem. So we're just bulking that up a little bit and it depends what wires you've got as well. So as you can see we've got the main body of our circlet is here and then we've got our ends to tie. So maybe you want to do like a ribbon what you could do is maybe start with your ribbon and this would end up at the back of the head where it finishes so we could put that in just now. In fact let's just do it. As we add flowers we're going to find that this all tightens up which is fine so realistically I might just do with that is just tape that round just to keep it out of the way. So for our flowers what I've done is I've wired these and taped them already but if you're not sure how to wire so take a little ivy leaf and we've got a stem down the back or a vein down the back of the leaf. If I just stitch through about two thirds of the way up bend over the wire and just a couple of little turns that gives us the perfect wire leaf and for taping we're just getting our tape connected on itself with a bit of a turn and then as you basically rub it you can pull the tape and you get a little bit of a tightness on it. For your flower again we can just go straight through the centre here bring down the wire once or twice round just to secure and again we can take that off. So the reason that we're wiring things is to make everything sit the way we want it and the reason that we tape things off is to stop those stems from drying out and basically for making the flowers last a little bit longer and basically the stem tape is also covering the wire hiding it and giving us that false stem that we want so we'll just do this other leaf. Now if you want to be really really correct you would wire everything but as you can see there's quite a lot of flowers here there's quite a lot of wiring and if you're working in the shop environment sometimes practicality is more important than necessarily doing things to competition standards. So what we're looking for here is to create something that is quick and easy and straightforward but still of good quality so we're not going to wire everything. So with our Ruscus leaves here I've just taken these down into little units but we've got a strong stem these are not going to break and we can just put them in straight as and the same with the little Santini Chrysanths we're just going to use these little stems because they're perfect. So what we're going to do is we're going to start and we're going to work our way right down and when we get to the point where it starts to go thinner we know that we've reached the end. So let's just start with an ivy leaf so I'm just literally lying that in. Now you can twist it round but probably your easiest thing is just to leave it flat and just tape straight on. So with our Gypsophila again I'm just lying it on like a little bundle and taping it on. So what you're ultimately doing is your tape is overlapping the material that you've done before so we're just going to add these in and we're going to build this up. So I think if you've got maybe like three or four little girls you're not going to want to spend all day doing this so you want to be able to make this quite quick. So a good tip is maybe to make your foliage in advance and then you can quite easily just bring that out of the fridge or bring that out and use it. So really the big volume in here is going to be our Gypsophila and it's perfect for just going in. If I want I can just tie things in and then trim off a little bit of that. So the one thing you want to make sure is that everything is secure and from the back that everything is nice and neat so really they're all staggered in but they're all very neat and tidy. We really don't want to have any wires sticking out that's going to spike anyone or make it uncomfortable to wear. But as you can see it does take a little bit time to create this because we've got quite a lot of product going on here. So your ivy leaves, your little bits of ruscus you could do probably a couple of days before but give them a little bit of a spray or a mist and then pop them into a bag, clear plastic bag, and then just pop that into the fridge. So we're getting there but these do take time and I think that's something you should take into account. So if you're thinking I'm going to leave them until on the day and do them last minute you need to know that you've got the time to do that especially if you've got two or three of them to do. So if you think you're going to get interrupted that's something you're going to have to take into account. So I must admit I would always try and persuade brides to have just gypsophila. It's so pretty and it's so easy and it's so quick. You don't need to make the same volume of flowers at all, you don't need to do the prepping in advance where you wire things, you can literally just cut little sections as you go and put them in. So we're getting close to the end here and this also gives you an idea of how many flowers you would need. I prefer to use this plastic tape. I think it's really clean and it's really quick and the great thing is you don't end up sticky from it. Some of the tapes make you feel a little bit more sticky and the problem with that is then you get to a point where your hands are just too sticky. Okay so we've got the last of the flowers. I'm just going to pop in one more leaf at the end and then I just want to finish off all these wires. We've got all these little wires here so I want to tape that completely. So just doing it upside down is perfect. So we've got our headband and now we can bring this together. So I'm just going to take the tape off and here then we can bring this together. I can just use this wire going between the flowers on this side and what I want to do is make sure that that points out the way. So really in some ways this is quite adjustable so if you're actually going to be fitting it for the head then that's perfect and as I say you can have the ribbon detail at the end or not it doesn't really matter. What you're looking for is just you've got a nice finish. We're just going to just gently manipulate this so that we get the simple circlet and it's as simple as that. So this would basically be the back of the circlet and we've got a simple floral circlet that will make Yanis look very pretty tonight when he wears it going out. So thank you for watching. I hope you've enjoyed today's video. We've got lots more videos to come but if you'd like to watch all our new videos then click here to subscribe and remember you can always watch our previous videos we've got quite a good selection. So thank you and enjoy!