Fairy Princess Tiara

Fairy Princess Tiara

Materials:
30 gauge wire
beads
needle nose pliers (with wire snipper)
round form

1. I used the round cover of a package of blank CDs as my form. Working straight from the spool of wire, anchor the end against the form using your thumb and start wrapping the wire around the form you're using. Try to hold the end at a slight angle, so the successive wire layers will hold it in place so your thumb will be free. Keep wrapping, keeping everything close together, till it's as thick as you want your tiara to be. I think I wrapped at least 45 times.

2. Carefully scoot the wire circle off the form, taking care to hold both ends of the wire so it doesn't uncoil. Snip the wire from the spool, leaving about a 2 foot tail. Start wrapping the tail around the other wires to hold them in place. The closer together you wrap this, the sturdier your tiara will be.

3. Once you've gone around once, start going around again but this time thread beads onto the wire so they're on top of the tiara. You can either just do this straight, or do one wrap with beads, then the next close to that and empty. You can also do a close, empty wrap on either side of the beads. Just depends on how well you think they're anchored to the top of the tiara.

4. When you've gone all the way around, wrap the wire tightly in one place a few times, snip it off, and try to tuck the end under to it won't poke.

5. You can either leave as is, or put a bow on back (over the wire end.) I wrapped the wire leaves around before tying the bow, but I think if I could snatch this back from Ernie's friend I'd take them off. They look a little strange sticking up in the back. Yet another project I made up as I went along!

Here's a few more pictures- a closer picture of the tiara, Ernie happy to be wearing her friend's birthday gifts, and Ernie just....being Ernie. She's always looked at us that way, even when she was a baby.