It's festival season! In San Francisco, a huge festival is happening right now: Outside Lands. Yep, while I'm sitting here under a blanket typing this, flower-crown-headed lovelies are dancing or singing along with J. Cole or LCD Soundsystem or Beach House under the stars in one my favorite places in the whole world, Golden Gate Park.

Anyway, did you catch that flower-crown-headed part? This post is to give you the opportunity to DIY your own flower crown so you can be one of those lovelies. Because I teach flower crown creation workshops, I've developed a technique that is EASY and doesn't compromise BEAUTY. Check it out. Let me know what you think. And, if you decide you want someone to make it for you, let me know.

Materials:

Floral Wire

Floral Tape

Thin wire, I like 24 Gauge

Pliers

Scissors (Forgot to include those in the picture!)

Preview

It's easier to work when you know what you're working towards. So here's a preview. We're making the wire part of the crown (what you see in the picture below).

What makes this crown awesome are the little waves. The little waves are key. They hold the flowers and make flower-crowning so much easier.

What makes it even more awesome is that little dark brown part? That's how it's going to be able to open and close... which means you'll be able to put it on and take it off without fussing up your hair. Awesome.

Step 1

Wrap the floral wire around your head to form the base.

Take it off your head and it will look something like this picture. Notice that we haven't cut or tied anything yet.

Step 2

Where the floral wire continues, fold it back over the base of your crown.

Where the floral wire ends, make a little hook. In my picture it looks like a crooked finger. We'll cover this with floral tape later (this is the dark brown part of the Preview picture).

Test to make sure you didn't make your base too small when you crooked the end. Go 'head, put it back on and check.

Step 3

Continue to make little sine waves. Yep, I took it back to math. An answer to the age-old wine: "What am I ever going to use this for?" Flower crowns!

You're using the extra floral wire (which you still haven't cut, by the way) to make little waves that barely fit your pinky finger in them above and below the base wire.

If your waves are bigger than a pinky, they won't be of much use to you-- the flowers won't stay. Stick your pinky in and measure each wave.

Step 4

Once you've made enough sine waves, wrap the wire tight around the base two or three times, like in this picture. Now you can cut it.

Step 5

Wrap the other end (the crooked end) of the base wire in about 1.5" floral tape.

This will keep the floral wire from fraying when taking it on and off.

You did it! This is what it should look like:

Step 6

The beauty of the pinky-sized sine waves in the wire crown we just made is that you can literally just stick flowers in them (and pull them back out) until you've created something you love.

So stick the flower stems in the waves. You can use long stems, even vines, by looping them through several waves. Once you have a wave or two filled the way you want them, move onto Step 7.

Tip: Avoid trimming any rouge stems until the very end. (Sometimes long stems can be wrapped with wire to hold the flowers steady.)

Step 7

When you've found a look you like, cut a 1-2" piece of the 24 gauge wire and wrap it around the flowers and floral wire.

Leave a little gap (as pictured below) between each wire wrapping to avoid slicing into the stems.

You don't have to fill every wave for it to look nice, either. Check out mine-- you can see the empty waves right in front.

That's it! Hope you have fun using this awesome wire frame to create a flower crown you love.

Want to step it up? Look up the meanings of your flora in our database at bloomequation.com/flowers and imbue your crown with meaning, like they did in Victorian times.

Shoot me any questions you might have. And send pictures if you try it out! I'd love to see what you come up with.