It’s funny. Until I looked at this tutorial close up, I was still on the fence about this craft. Not because it wasn’t easy (it was so easy that it’s absurd we’re calling it Crafty), and it’s not that it wasn’t pretty. It’s just that we’d made it so… pink. But after looking at the whole tutorial, I’m sold. Because the thing is, these are basic instructions that you can use to create any kind of fascinator. You can make a white bridal one, multi-color bridesmaid ones. You can use flower leaves for decorations, or something else (feathers anyone?). And hot tip: you can totally tweak this tutorial to make a birdcage veil, easy-peasy.
Although the finished look of this fascinator might be complicated, the actual process of it is super simple. A few tips:
- When choosing pieces to use, make sure to choose a variety of sizes, textures, and colors, but not TOO many blamo bling pieces. (Unless you are Maddie. Then bedazzle everything.) For the rest of us, you’re going to need somewhere for the eye to rest to emphasize the awesome sparklies.
- You’ll want to arrange some larger pieces together to form base. We used three—it’s generally good to start with odd numbers.
- Once the base is formed, use smaller pieces (of varying size) to build additional layers on top, continuing to glue with small dots of hot glue in hidden places to connect.
- We built ours in two pieces (three base petals glued together, three top petals glued together) and then glued those two groupings together.
- If you don’t want to use tulle, you can actually stop here and just skip on down to the comb-attaching tutorial. It will look cute just as it is!
- Once you establish how much tulle you want to use (ours was less than an arm’s length), you’ll want to sew the tulle together. There are two ways of doing this:
- If you are handy with a sewing machine and have one available to you, baste two rows of stitches along one long edge of the tulle and gather the edge into a tight bunch.
- If you don’t have your sewing machine handy, cheat by bunching one long edge together in fairly even sections. Once this long edge is gathered together, use a needle and thread to sew the gathered edge together. (You could also choose to hot glue, but hot gluing tulle to itself is really not fun.)
- Once the long edge is gathered, pull the other two corners into the gathered bunch. Secure to the petals using hot glue.
- Apply hot glue to the edge of the comb and secure to comb. Let the glue cool completely.
- Pro-tip (not pictured) from APW Editor Kate: Once the petal part was established and glued together, I took some floral wire and glued it in a circle on the underside of the fascinator in the area that all of the petals overlapped. This way, I was able to control the shape a bit more, allowing it to lay more flat on Meg’s head.
Photos by Emily Takes Photos, Crafting by APW Editor Kate, with help from Lowe House Events, Graphic Design by Michelle Edgemont
