I Know The Plans I Have For You: Lace Crown for a Princess {a tutorial}

Having two girls, I have so much fun searching for those great little pretties that are out there to make! My poor son gets a bit of the short end, but it's no different than going to the mall....girls stuff is just more fun! It's been a super busy month here, with celebrating my middle daughters birthday a few weeks ago, my anniversary a couple of weeks ago, my husbands birthday last weekend, my youngest daughters birthday on Wednesday, and my sons' birthday this Sunday! Phew!! I am tired just listing them! Now as much as I have a blast getting the family together {wink wink}, I'm not really interested in having a party every weekend in July! So this weekend, my son has been a great sport, to share his party with his baby sister. Thank God he just LOVES her, cause if he didn't, I'd have to endure the family get together another weekend (Thanks baby...mama loves you!). My little one turned 2 and my son will be 9, so having a shared party is a little difficult for me. Unfortunately (for him) I am having a hard time getting myself to make him any decorations. That's because I am having so much fun making hers!!

I've seen a few lace crowns around blogland, and who doesn't love a beautiful crown?? So when I helped my sweet, older neighbor (who is basically me in 40 years! A total craftin', sewin', repurposin', reupholsterin', diy'er) move a few weeks ago, she gave me BAGS full of fabric, vintage lace, thread, upholstery supplies, and TONS more, I knew that I just had to make a couple of crowns! (She's a bid of a hoarder, but in a GOOD way!! Shhhh ;-))
So I started to go through her collection of lace, it wasn't hard to decide which to use for the crowns, I just had to decide how many I wanted to make. I decided that I was going to make 3 of them, in case it didn't work out. I could always make more if they did. I had all of the supplies except for fabric stiffener. Some people use Mod Podge, but I figured spraying the stiffener would be much easier. I found a great tutorial on the Joyfolie blog that you can check out.

Here is how I made mine:

Supplies:
♥ lace (of course)
♥ wax paper (it's to have something to lay the lace on when you spray the stiffener so you can use anything)
♥ tacky glue (just what I chose to use to glue the crown together. Any glue is fine)
♥ scissors
♥ tape measure

Optional:
♥ paint (any kind of paint. I used acrylic paint)
♥ hair dryer (I'm not patient enough to just let it air dry)
♥ flower, pin, feather (what ever you choose to make it extra pretty)

For my flower:
♥ satin fabric (maybe its rayon, I'm not sure)
♥ scissors
♥ lighter
♥ button
♥ hot glue/glue gun

Here is the lace that I chose...

The wider lace is very soft lace, so I wasn't sure how it would work. But it was such beautiful lace, that I wanted to see how it would look. This is the fabric stiffener that I used. I purchased it at Walmart for 4 or 5 dollars.

My daughter was sleeping on the couch, so I measured her head (in the shape of the crown) while she slept :)! I made them about 13 inches.

Now because I can never do anything at a reasonable hour (I started at 12:30 am) I wasn't about to wait an hour for each coat of stiffener to dry! So I used a hair dryer. This process, though easy, got on my nerves a bit. The lace wouldn't stay flat with the dryer, so I just held each piece and they flapped in the wind :) I did this about 4 times with each piece, and for some reason I wasn't expecting them to completely soften with each spray. So I felt a little like I was starting over every time I decided to put on another coat. I also knew that the crowns didn't get completely hard when finished, and that they would have some give, but I thought that they would get stiffer than they did.

Anyway, once the lace is dry you can either leave them as they are, or paint them. I decided to paint mine, but I think unpainted can be really beautiful too!

I didn't wait for each side to dry, I just flipped it over and painted the other side. I love how the paint brings out the detail! I used a metallic silver and used the hair dryer to dry the paint too.

I had planned on making 3 crowns, but once they were painted, I decided to place the 2 strips of lace in the picture above together with a bead of the tacky glue along the flat edge. That gave the crown much more structure! Then I glued the ends together and placed them around a large upside down glass to dry overnight.

They had stiffened up a little more overnight, but the thick one was still pretty flimsy. Next time, I will definitely use 2 layers of that!

For the flower, I cut the fabric in a circular shape (doesn't have to be perfect). How many you cut will depend on how you want the flower to look. I think I used 9 pieces. Sorry that I didn't take pics of this part!
Then using the lighter, melt the edges. Be very careful with this part because is can easily become shaped weird or light on fire! The heat will do this pretty quickly!

Once all of my petals were done, I just layered them from bottom up, and put a dot of hot glue on the bottom of the each petal.

Add a button, pin, broach, or anything that you want to the middle and either glue the flower on with hot glue, or if you choose a pin, you can pin it on to the crown. And you have yourself a pretty little crown, for a pretty little girl. (I didn't put the flower on the big one, because it didn't withstand the weight of the pin I wanted to use on it. So what you see above, it what it still looks like)

Tip: If some of the petals aren't the right size, once you have it put together you can cut them to size, and use the lighter again to get the shape that your going for. If it is close to the right size, but you just don't like the shape, just use the lighter to get the look you desire.