And the rest!

Regal Tiara

These are the final two designs I have completed this summer. I've been neglecting my favorite thing all year because of my job: making art. So, I'm back, and hopefully I can try to update more often and make designs more frequently. The only thing that makes me happier than art are animals.

This tiara is another I made from a necklace I never wore. The necklace was an attractive enough design, but I knew it would look better as a spike style tiara. I attached the necklace to a tiara frame, added a row of purple rhinestones, and wired in a metallic gold pipe cleaner for reinforcement.

Reine d'Argent Tiara

I actually made this tiara a while ago, but couldn't decided if I wanted to list it, then it got put into the back of my mind. As always, an elfin-inspired design, the tiara is very attractive when worn.

Onyx Crystal Tiara

Finally, I wanted to try out petite tiara designs using metal combs and crystals. This is just a start, but it's very simple and elegant, and adds a subtle touch of sparkle to your hair.

Wedding Tiaras

 I like the theme of wedding tiaras because the designs can be so elegant. I don't ever approach a tiara design with the thought in mind that it is meant for a bride. Rather, I think up designs, make it, and if it looks like a bridal tiara, then I market it as that. Simple. That reminds me of Maurice Sendak's interview with Stephen Colbert, where he said that he wrote and illustrated books, and then people told him, "that's for kids," and he was like, "ok!"

I just want to create what makes me happy.

Royal Princess Bridal Tiara

The Royal Princess Bridal Tiara is based from a beautiful vintage necklace that is covered with aurora borealis pale yellow rhinestones. I bought the necklace with a tiara in mind, so I never actually wore it. The trick was how to attach it to a tiara frame. I added pearls to the design, and the final result is so elegant and beautiful, it seems like a perfect bridal tiara.

Pearl and Rose Bandeau

I made this design after finding at a thrift store some creamy-colored ribbon that had little roses sewn onto it. I kept having it in mind as a design for a tiara, and couldn't come up with anything for awhile. I then realized I could make a bandeau or headband style of tiara, and use the ribbon. I added rows of pearls on either side of the ribbon. A very simple headband, but also very elegant.

Silver Pony Cake Hat

This final piece is a work of art! I've been working on the Silver Pony Cake Hat for over a month now. I love My Little Ponies and things spray painted gold or silver, so it is a match made in heaven. I handmade the top hat form out of cardboard, then started attaching My Little Ponies, knock-off My Little Ponies, random costume jewelry, and other findings for variety and texture. The entire thing is spray painted silver and I attached a comb to the bottom so that it stays in your hair. A heavy piece, not to be taken lightly!

Make-Your-Own Tiara Kits

I've had the idea for a while to sell DIY tiara kits, it just took me a while to figure out the logistics of it. I finally found an online supplier of wire tiara combs, and I've decided to use foam for the tiaras. The marketed age group for these tiaras is 5-10 years old.

Each Kit makes 5 tiaras, and includes the following:

Purchase your own Make-Your-Own Tiara Kits

Each kit has 5 bags, with each bag containing:

• 1 hair comb (w/added wire fittings for the foam tiara to fit into)

• 1 piece of foam (choose from pink, yellow, or a mix of pink and yellow)
• 4 stick-on foam glitter stars
• 3 silver star sequins
• 4 round rhinestones
• 1 heart rhinestone
• 1 strip sequins
• 1 stick-on silver Ferido rhinestone
• 2 strips stick-on rhinestones
• 4 sparkly beads

• 1 package of gold glitter is also included with each kit

All you need is:

• Scissors

• Glue (hot glue or school glue will work; you'll just have to wait for the school glue to dry if you choose this option)

++PLEASE HAVE ADULT SUPERVISION WHEN USING SCISSORS AND HOT GLUE++

Directions:

1. Fold your rectangle of foam in half "hamburger style."

2. Draw out half of your tiara design, making sure that the tall part of the design is on the crease line.

3. Carefully cut out the pattern drawn and unfold the foam.

4. Decorate your tiara - half of the items are self-stick, the other half will need to be glued down.

5. Now to attach the tiara to the comb.

Simply fit the ends of the tiara in between the two wire loops on each side of the comb. Gently pinch the loops together to secure the tiara. You could even add some glue to the backside of the loop and tiara at this point so that the tiara does not comb off the comb.

Secure the tiara to both sides of the comb.

6. You have your own custom made tiara. Congratulations!

Different examples of tiaras that can be made from each bag of tiara goodies. I have included more goodies in each bag than will probably be used on each tiara, but it will allow for more variation and choice in design.

Ruby Red Tiaras

 Red seems to be a hot seller, I think mostly because of Alice in Wonderland's two red queens, The Queen of Hearts in Wonderland, and the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass. Red is also just a great happy color!

Red Rhinestone Diadem

Not only to I make jewelry, I also love to buy jewelry. On one such visit to a department store, I stumbled across a clearance jewelry section, and found this awesome red rhinestone necklace. I wore it several times, but it was just screaming "tiara" at me, so I finally put my plan into action. I took the necklace apart, which was made up of various rhinestone pendants, and put them back together into a graduated tiara shape. The final tiara looks a lot like the Russian kokoshnik form popular at the turn of the century. To finish off the piece, I added rows of red rhinestones to the top and bottom of the tiara frame.

Ruby Elf Tiara

I found a great sale recently at my favorite supply store, with items up to 90% off. That meant a score for me, since I don't have to worry about breaking the bank on supplies I don't have immediate plans for. One of the items I found was a sparkling red oak leaf sort of craft sprig. I used this as the basis for the tiara, and added red rhinestone beads to the piece. This piece really could be worn anywhere, it's not too large and adds some sparkle into a dreary day.

Red Queen Diadem

This tiara was an experiment of sorts. I tried to make a tall crown shape using glittery red craft twigs. Each one is in a vague heart shape, referencing the Queen of Hearts. I used some black netting behind the twigs to add some mystery and glamor, and a row of black rhinestones is at the base of the tiara.

Woodland Tiaras

Juniper Tiara

Woodland tiaras are always in style, and they are usually simple enough that you can wear them anywhere. Here are some of my new woodland tiara styles.

Ocean Flora Tiara

This one is more of a mermaid tiara than a woodland tiara. The sparkling green and the bright turquoise sequins make it a bit more flashy. It has a very attractive asymmetrical shape to it.

Frosty Woodland Tiara

A simple frosty leaf tiara.

Woodland Winter Faun Tiara

My first woodland faun tiara. I made horns out of glittery white polymer clay, and interspersed frosty winter branches on the tiara. Also asymmetrical in design.

Woodland Queen Tiara

This is more of an elfin queen tiara, with upright glittery velvet leaves and sparkling gold berries.

Bird's Nest Tiara

And this is a super adorable tiara! I've been wanting to use the golden bird for a long time, but couldn't come up with a design for it. For this tiara, I made a nest out of glittery brown twigs and leaves, and juniper branches. I suppose it's really more of a hat or fascinator than a tiara.

Also, you may notice that my portraits look better than they usually do. This is because I employed my husband to take my pics, no selfie shots this round!

Polymer Clay Tiaras

Aquamarine Blue Tiara

I've seen people do some really neat stuff with polymer clay. I don't have a lot of experience with the medium, but I have been using it more. What I love to do is use glass marble cabochons as gems in jewelry. They are inexpensive, but they are very striking in jewels. In the past, I have handcrafted bezel settings out of paper, which was time consuming but does look good. Recently, I've been using polymer clay, and the end result is just as good, and much less labor involved!

Basically, I make all the clay bezel settings and bake them in the oven with the marbles attached. I then wire all the pieces onto a tiara frame, spray paint the entire thing either gold or silver, and then glue the glass cabochons into the frame.

Here are three tiara designs I came up with.

Blue Elfin Tiara

Emerald Cabochon Tiara

Queen Maxima Star Tiara

Stars are my favorite emblem in jewelry, and most notably the many-pointed stars you see in Victorian jewels. I decided to finally make my own "diamond star tiara," and the end result is fantastic! I used polymer clay and rhinestones and wire.

This tiara resembles the one worn by Queen Maxima when she married King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands.

I have many more new tiaras out, so I will be updating the blog for next week or so.

The Queen Maxima Star Tiara

Stay tuned...lots of new tiaras on the way!

I have been busy indeed making lots of new tiaras! Stay tuned, I am very excited to show them off in a few weeks' time. This year has been a struggle, and I've been neglecting my favorite hobby: tiara making. This is to make up for that, and there will be lots of new stock for Halloween.

A small taste of what's to come: some new tiara designs in a stack.

I also made another crab claw tiara:

A custom order for a customer. I made the three-clawed tiara for her originally, and she really just wanted the two-clawed one, so I made another!

Purple Empress

Queen Hermione Tiara

I have once again gone back to a tiara that I made years ago, to revamp it. This was a tiara I originally made for an Alice in Wonderland costume for Hallowe'en, circa October 2011. You can see the original tiara below. I was never 100% happy with the design, so I never listed it for sale. I used lots of fun jeweled baubles: vintage clip earrings, mismatched pendants, and odds and ends. The band was originally wrapped in a bright blue ribbon, which matched well with the Alice theme.

To remake this tiara, I added another band to the bottom of the tiara, so that there isn't a "ballerina" shape to the tiara anymore. Because I didn't want the blue ribbon to show anymore, I spray painted the new band and the blue band silver (by masking off the parts I didn't want sprayed). To the band I then added a double row of purple rhinestones. The tiara is a now a lovely purple and blue theme, colors I don't often use in my designs. I also added some purple rhinestones throughout the tiara to help pull everything together.

The finished piece is quite magnificent, if I do say so myself!

The original tiara, circa October 2011.

The tiara itself is very large and grand. The design is also finely detailed and delicate, creating a very royal look. This would be a perfect tiara for a fancier Empress costume.

Mermaids and Flowers

Crab Claws Tiara

Who knew people were going to like the crab claw tiaras so much? This one utilizes three real crab claws into the design. I ran low on supplies and did not have two even remotely similar crab claws, so I went the asymmetrical route, which I think works very well!

Golden Hydrangea Tiara

This tiara was actually inspired by a Pinterest post. You know the post where they show how you can make little metal wire outline flowers, then fill them in with nail polish? I didn't quite believe it, so I tried it! It does work; however, the tiara is only as good as the strength of the nail polish, so I decided to mod podge the whole thing, therefore reinforcing all the flowers. And of course, I like when things are spray painted gold, so spraying it gold pulled it all together. A sweet little delicate thing! Tiny glass aurora rhinestones decorate the middles of some of the flowers.

Seastar Tiara

And let's not forget about the mermaids! Oh, how I love mermaid hair accessories. This one centers around a nice large papier mâché sea star that I bought ages ago. This was always the intention for the sea star, so I painted it a nice opalescent blue color, put some glass rhinestones on it, and attached it to one of my handcrafted wire tiara bands.

Nice green sparkling seaweed sprigs are intermixed with faux turquoise and creamy white pearls, and I used some recycled green netting (you know the ones that your avocados come in?) to imitate...fishing nets, I guess. It sounds very weird now to say that I am imitating fishing nets on a mermaid tiara, but anyways, it does look good.

More Creativity!

I've been neglecting not only the artistic creation (haven't been making too many new tiara designs) but the blog has been getting forgotten as well. The last post was from February! So sorry.

I buy things I am partial to, and I found these beautiful titanium-coated quartz crystal beads, so of course I bought blue and turquoise ones. The first piece I made with them was several months ago, and it's an asymmetrical headband. I've seen this type of headband in fashion magazines quite a lot recently, and wanted to jump on the design bandwagon. This one is a bit more elaborate, and is a traditional tiara design, with the pieces wired onto a very nice comb that I found off of Ebay, of all places! To fill in the gaps, I wired on little crystals in the same color around the base of the quartz.

The piece itself sold quite quickly, which was awesome. The biggest encouragement for me is when I make a sale, it gives me so much motivation to create more!

Red Queen Sceptre

Meanwhile, I've been wanted to get into the accessories market for a while. Many other princess-themed Etsy shops sell not only cute tiaras, but the wands to go with them.

Naturally, I went with the Red Queen theme, and made a simple gold and red wand that is about 14 inches long. It is made completely from wire and rhinestones, with some other craft findings. Definitely a lot of potential in this market to do some crazy stuff, so I've got the wand/sceptre idea in my head for future designs.

And of course, a tiara that matches well with the sceptre. This is actually a similar tiara to three others I have made in the past, what, 4 years? This is a made to order version, and I had the ingenious idea to not use a real watch face (where it can not only be expensive to find a watch to use the face from, but also consistency with what watch face is used and the color scheme, etc.). Instead, I used my handy Shrinky Dinks and made a watch face! So I get my classy Roman Numerals face that I love so much, and I can keep each rendition consistent.

Made to Order Queen of Hearts Tiara

Love for an Artist

When I was in high school, a new bridge opened up in Tacoma, WA. It had been designed by an artist named Dale Chihuly, and included a popular installation by him called a "Persian Ceiling." Naturally, I fell in love with Dale Chihuly's work after that. His objects are colorful, bright, textured, transparent, translucent, and he works mostly in glass. Glass is a material I haven't much experience with, except for one 3-hour long lampwork glass bead class at Pratt Fine Arts in Seattle, WA.

Sunset Persian Flowers Tiara

In Seattle, there is an entire exhibition dedicated to Mr Chihuly's artwork, which makes sense because he does currently live in the city and was born and raised in the area. The pièce de résistance of the exhibition is a 100-foot long chandelier in the glasshouse. There are over 1,000 individual pieces of glass attached to a steel frame. The glass objects are very flower like, and are from the artist's Persian series, which he started back in 1986. The series is characterized by swirls of colored and clear glass, spider-web like texture, and colored glass around the entire edge of the piece called a lip wrap.

Not being a glass artist myself, and not having the resources to delve into creating a glass tiara that was inspired by this amazing chandelier, I set about trying to figure out what I could use instead to make those delicate Persian designs. First, I tried Shrinky Dinks, but the issue is that when heated in the oven, the flower shapes shrank too much, and actually ended up much too thick. They also didn't have the characteristic crimpy shapes that Chihuly's Persians have.

After a long pause, I then decided to try polymer clay. My sister had bought a large block of translucent white polymer clay. I made swirled canes with colored clay and translucent clay (similar to making a jelly roll), sliced off thin pieces, then carefully put these through a clay pasta roller. The pieces were ridiculously thin, which was perfect, and I carefully draped and shaped these over round balls of aluminum foil that were set out on a cookie sheet. I baked them in the oven for a good long time (that's the trick to baking polymer clay!), and out of the oven, I glazed them with polymer clay varnish.

Where does the tiara end and the chandelier begin? At Chihuly Garden and Glass, Seattle, WA.

I then had to hand paint the characteristic "lip wrap" on each one, so I chose yellow, red, and deep blue acrylic paints to do so. It was then simple to make a wire frame, glue each flower shape onto the frame, and voila!, it is absolutely perfect!

The tiara has about 25 of these delicate clay flower shapes!