I was originally making this wire crown to sell either on Etsy or Ebay, but then I realized that it wasn't going to be a very comfortable accessory to wear, and it is so large! My boyfriend gave me the brilliant idea of turning this thing into a sort of lampshade! I used white tissue paper, and put it in the inside of the wire crown frame, and I plan on actually hanging it upside down (I know, crazy, right?!) from my ceiling. I also plan to put some colored LED lights into it, which will show through the translucent white tissue paper, giving off a cool rainbow effect. If I can't find a colored strand of LEDs, I'll just use the white ones and paint the white tissue paper in various rainbow shades. The whole thing is about 12 inches high!
I do want to make more crowns, so far I have only made one Queen of Hearts crown that sold last Halloween. Crowns are so much harder to make than tiaras, and to get the arches the same size, and to look symmetrical, it is so much harder than you can imagine! I love this dark-colored wire that I used to make it. It is a gauge that isn't so thick that it's hard to maneuver, but it has a strength that allows me to do pretty much whatever I want with it. It was also ridiculously cheap, where I bought this huge coil of it at my college bookstore! And the tissue paper is rescued from an old gift someone gave me! Basically, most of my tiaras only cost me time to make, I get most of the supplies donated, I find some of them (literally, I pick them off of the pavement), some of it I've had for years. I know a lot of artists, and most artists are like bag ladies, keeping tons of supplies that they never end up using. I've gotten polymer clay, costume jewelry, paint, charms, varnishes, spray paint. The cool thing about polymer clay is that it doesn't matter what color it is, you can always spray paint it (or paint it by hand), and that color is normally gold, or glittery. I absolutely love to make tiaras! Most of them only take me about 2 hours to make.
