subject: How to: Make a Hair Pom [print this page] Warm weather means the return of flowers and floral print, and a big holdover trend from last year is oversize hair accessories. What better way to incorporate the two trends than with a DIY hair flower?
The inspiration for this project comes from Anthropologie's "Extra Zest Clip." When I saw this in the store, my first thought was "I need to own this!" followed by "Eighteen bucks? No way!" culminating in "Hey that looks kind of like Martha Stewart's tissue paper pom poms" And so, the idea for a DIY Anthro clip was born.
Step 1. Using Martha's tutorial, I first cut out eight squares from some black chiffon I had in my stash (any fabric will dobe creative!). I used 4x4 inch squares, but you can use bigger ones if you'd like a bigger flower. The project only works with squares (not rectangles, parallelograms, trapezoids, etc.), but they don't have to be perfect squares.
Step 2. Stack the squares on top of each other and accordion fold all the way down. This is a little trickier with fabric than with tissue paper, but it is feasible. The tutorial says to make inch folds, but that is with a much larger piece of material. I just made my folds as small as I could while still keeping some semblance of uniformity. Just as in Step 1, it doesn't matter if your folds are very even.
Step 3. Wrap a piece of wire around the center of your folded squares and twist to secure.
Step 4. Trim the ends of the accordion folds to make them rounded or pointy, whatever your preference. You may have to go back and trim them more once they are separated, because cutting through that many layers of fabric takes a bit of muscle!
Step 5. Separate the layers from each other and "fluff" appropriately. This step is mostly trial and error. Once you've got all the layers separated, just pull and prod at the petals until they look how you want them to look.
Step 6. To wear your hair flower, either wrap the extra wire from the middle around a headband (this is easily removable too, in case you want to wear it on different headbands) or attach to an alligator clip. If you'd like to use your flower as a brooch, you can alternatively attach a pin to the back.
And voila! You are now a veritable fashion maven, with your wallet intact.
