More felt crowns, fairy wands and a skirt!

It was Hazel's very good friend Suzie's fourth birthday today so I made up this set for her.



She loves dressups and I'd been thinking this might be a good idea, so when she liked Hazel's crown and wand last weekend I knew I was on to a winner! Like Hazel's, the crown pattern is from Koala Brains and the wand from Little Birdie Secrets, the skirt is my own invention having seen a few with petals trapped in a tube before. It went down very well although I have to make the crown a bit smaller and return it at creche on Monday. She was a bit reluctant to let it go but even at four could see the sense in it not slipping over her eyes every 5 seconds!



It's fun dwelling in fairy-land, I hate to leave!

Birthday preparations

Let's pretend I actually blogged about this before the party shall we? Great.

I decided that Hazel, being a four year old girl, needed a crown and wand for the party and duly constructed them.



The crown was made from the pattern at Koala Brains, with embellishments inspired by Woodcraft's felt crown and another one that had cute embroidery on it but I'm darned if I can find it again to credit it! I started with the big felt flower, and then had the idea with the button flowers, and then decided to round it out with some little plain plants similar to the ones I've been loving over at Tiny Happy. I don't often do things in that sort of organic way, I tend to be more planned, but I really enjoyed the process of just adding things until it looked right.



For the wand I followed the instructions over at Little Birdie Secrets and I think it came out ok, but perhaps would have been better with shorter ribbons and more of them.



Whatever, I think it looks pretty good and I'll be doing another one for her friend Suzy so will get a chance to get it more to my taste. The best thing about making the wand was curling the ribbons - it's like magic! The only issue I had is a couple of my dowels exuded resins during the baking which soaked into the ribbons and ruined them. Next time I'll cover the dowels with foil before wrapping the ribbon around and that should solve that problem. Made the house smell nice though, like a pine forest on a hot day!

Hazel being four though, didn't really want a bar of either item! She spent most of her party tearing around the house holding model dinosaurs. This created a conflict in my heart - on one hand I was a bit crushed that she didn't appreciate all that hard work, but on the other hand I'm really pleased that she's into dinosaurs! Archaeologists don't dig up dinosaurs, but they really are the next best thing (or possibly even better to be honest) so I'll cross my fingers she becomes a palaentologist and takes her old mum on excavations sometimes.

Felt Crown

I'd been planning on making Hazel a felt crown for her birthday party, and had several tutorials and posts on making them bookmarked when my friend Rebeccah asked if I could make her son Alexander one for his first birthday. At first I was all "oh no! pipped at the post in the cool crafty mum" stakes but then I cunningly realised it was the perfect opportunity to practice making one first :)

I mostly used the great tutorial and pattern at Balancing Everything, along with the tutorials and pictures at Woodcraft, Juicybits and Koala brains with a few modifications of my own. I think Rebeccah's decision to use red as the accent colour was inspired, I just love how all the colours work together.




Unfortunately all we had to work with was the wool blend felt, which compressed like crazy when ironed, so the crown lacks thickness. I ended up with with two layers at the tips, and three at the bottom. I did the embroidery and the zig-zags through two layers of felt (small and large pieces) and then backed both with another large piece and attached the ribbon at the bottom for stability. The points have a tendency to get bent, but an iron will straighten them out easily. I'm sure nice thick pure wool would be soooo much better!




I extended the sides back a bit on the Balancing Everything pattern and I like the curved effect, although I obviously needed to bring it down a bit narrower to match the width of the elastic I used.