I crown thee ... Queen of Hearts

Next weekend is Halloween and this year I have a 'proper' halloween party to go to.

When I say proper, I mean that it requires the party goer to dress as something ghoulish or scary, so no sexy mermaid or minnie mouse for me :(

I don't watch a lot of scary movies so I don't have a lot of inspiration in they way of frightful costume ideas so it took me a while to decide what/who to go as.

I finally decided on a baddie from one of this years iconic movies - Alice in Wonderland. Queen of Hearts being the said baddie. She's scary enough, huh?

So, I have the dress, the shoes, the bag, nails, make up ... even the hair but one vital piece of the costume was missing.

The Crown.

After scouring the shops and the internet there was nothing that suited. I was either offered cheap tiaras or pink fluffy crowns from the likes of Claire's and offered pricey but beautiful creations from Etsy and Ebay. Not wanting to break the bank, however, I thought I would try my hand at making my own.

The beginnings of my crown

Fortunately I live right next to a crafts store so on Saturday I went for a browse and left laden with moulding wire, swarovski beads and glass lovehearts.

This is my first attempt at trying to make a tiara or crown of any sort and although a bit messy as I had no plan in place for how it would look when I started, I really love the result. It has even inspired me to design and make more.
I plan on placing the crown nonchalantly on the side of my head although I have made it big enough to place in the centre. Hopefully my massive backcombed hair on the night will keep it in place.

To create my little masterpiece I used wire of 3 different guage/thickness with the thickest being used as the base of the crown and depending on weight of the beads I used an appropriate wire to support.

I also used 3 different styles of bead - a red swarovski crystal bead, a red glass loveheart and a black plastic bead. I shaped wire in the shape of love hearts all the way around the base with a main large black and red loveheart at the front of the crown.

If I had put more thought into the whole effort I would have designed the crown before I began and would have known what materials I wanted prior to purchase but these are all things I can change for next time as I am sure I will try this out again. It's quite therapeutic.

What do you think of my DIY crown? Does it do Queen of Hearts justice?

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