Handcrafting an Elegant Orchid and Rose Fascinator Hat DIY

This might be my favorite project I’ve made to date. I saw an incredible flower headpiece photo online and knew I wanted to make something inspired by it for an office St. Patrick’s Day lunch. We were supposed to wear our most outrageous outfits. I wasn’t feeling outrageous, but I was feeling big—as in a big hat. Haha.

Making the Hat Base

I had made a small fascinator a few years ago. It’s a small, cute pink and white one. But this needed to be big. Statement making. Over the top, perhaps? lol. I wanted it to angle over my eye and go up in the back. So I needed to figure out how to make that happen. I found some tutorials online and realized that I needed fabric stiffener. I drew up a rounded diamond-ish shape I liked and then soaked it in stiffener, shaped it, and left it overnight to dry. Surprisingly it worked! I then added a “loop” underneath so a headband can slip through and hold the hat in place. It mostly worked. It ended up being a little heavy for the style of headband I wore.

The Orchid and Rose Fascinator DIY
Rigging up a solution to shape the felt base the way I wanted while the stiffener dried. It worked!
Woman wearing glasses wears a shaped piece of felt on her head. It's the base of a hat.
Shaping the hat worked!

Creating the Flowers

Then I got to work on flowers. I loved the huge orchids on the inspo photo so I made three big ones, with some flower buds up at the top so it looked more like a branch. I used the branch as the basic armature of the hat. There needed to be some accent flowers. Since this was for a St. Patrick’s Day party, I went with seven gold roses.

Paper Orchid branch and roses.
The paper orchid branch and roses are ready to be added to the hat base. I ended up making another small rose to tuck into an empty spot.

The full-sized orchids are about six inches across—they are big! The biggest rose is about five inches and gets progressively smaller.

White Orchids and Gold roses sit on a mannequin head.
Testing out rose placement.
A headband holds the hat on the head for this orchid and rose fascinator diy.
Here, you can see how the headband slips through a “loop” underneath the hat base.

Making the Leaves

Once I had the roses added, I knew I needed some greenery. Maybe lots of greenery?

Green crepe has a bad habit of fading and bleaching out in the sun, so I was hesitant to use it for this project, because I wanted it to have longevity. There are sprays that can be used to help with color fixing, but they are not permanent. One way to help combat this is to paint or dye your own crepe. I chose to do this for my green. I’ve painted green crepe for my rose leaves before. This time, I wanted to try dyeing white crepe green. I picked up acrylic ink in a variety of blues, yellows, and greens (even a silvery green, which gave the leaves a cool, subtle shimmer). If you are looking for these paints, I suggest looking at Michaels and when they are on sale or if you have a coupon.

I decided on a leaf shape roughly similar to a blue gum eucalyptus (my favorite!) and cut my white crepe paper into strips that would be that leaf length. I mixed the paint with water and put the paper strips in to absorb the color. Then, I went back over the paper with additional drops of paint as it was drying but still damp to get more color variation. I LOVE HOW IT TURNED OUT. I will definitely be doing this method again. The color was amazing.

Green strips of paper drying on a metal tray.
Drying dyed paper on cookie sheets. These will become the leaves.
paper leaves of various shades of green lay scattered on a white background
I love how the variegation turned out on the leaves!

Adding the Greenery

Green leaves added to orchid and rose hat diy.
Leaves added to the back of the hat.

I glued the leaves individually to the armature so I could place and shape them where I wanted. The nice thing about having wired leaves (and petals, if the flower calls for it) is that you can shape the leaf and have it go wherever you like. It was fun to have the leaves curl, bend, and weave throughout this project.

I needed “ground cover” in a blank spot in the back, so since it was St. Patrick’s Day, I added tons of little clovers. I used the template I put together from my redwood sorrel (which isn’t related). There is a four-leaf clover in the clover patch. It’s hiding in the back a little, towards the bottom (not really visible in the photo below).

Clovers in the back of the Orchid and Rose Fascinator diy
Clovers having their moment in the back of my orchid hat. I added a little bling and sparkle to give it my “extra” signature. haha.

Finishing Touches

Next were the finishing touches. Adding the leaves, the green wire loops I’d made, and feathers I’d picked up at a local craft store.

testing wire loops for the hat.
Testing out the placement of the wire loops and feathers I made.

The wire loops were 20 gauge wire wrapped in green crepe paper. I made 15 lengths and grouped them into five groups of three. Then, I wove them in and out of the flowers and leaves.

I found an ostrich feather “branch” at a craft store and loved it so much I just had to incorporate it. There are two sections at the top and one at the bottom. With these added, the hat is 24 inches long! I did make them removable. lol.

It needed something else. Some pièce de résistance. I had already added a touch of glitter in the back and didn’t want to add more. But gold leaf? YES. I added patches of it in random spots all over. I loved how it turned out.

  • Gold leaf added randomly to the leaves and petals.
  • Orchid and Rose Fascinator

Finale

If you’ve made it this far, bravo! Let’s see how it turned out!

  • Orchid and Rose Fascinator
  • Finished Orchid and Rose Fascinator DIY
  • Orchid and Rose Fascinator
  • Orchid and Rose Fascinator

After it was a hit at the party (if I do say so myself, lol), I needed a way to store it safely. I found a large frame at a thrift store and thought it was perfect for mounting the fascinator. I refinished the gold with some rub ‘n’ buff. Then, I mounted the hat on cardstock. I used zip ties to attach it to the frame so I could clip it out if I wanted to use the hat again. I’m pretty proud of how professional it ended up looking!

  • Mounted and framed Orchid and Rose Fascinator
  • Mounted and framed Orchid and Rose Fascinator
  • Mounted and framed Orchid and Rose Fascinator
  • Mounted and framed Orchid and Rose Fascinator
  • Mounted and framed Orchid and Rose Fascinator
  • Mounted and framed Orchid and Rose Fascinator
  • Mounted and framed Orchid and Rose Fascinator

To wrap up this post, I entered it at the State Fair this year and got a First Place Ribbon!

Mounted fascinator with a blue first prize ribbon attached.

Thanks for reading!

xoxo!

Paper Egret Orchid Stems in a Vase

Paper Egret Orchid Stems in a Paper Vase
Paper Egret Orchid Stems in a Paper Vase

Today I’m sharing some Egret Orchid Stems made from paper and wire. Such a fun project to put together. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out! 

A real Egret Orchid. Such a stunning flower.

I have a friend that is a plant killer (her words, not mine) and I wanted to give her a plant she couldn’t kill. I also wanted to try out making out a 3D flower and thought I’d make my own design. 

Looking online at different flowers, I came across this beautiful Egret Orchid and knew this was the one I wanted to make. 

How I Made Them

I took the photo of the Egret Orchid and imported it into my Silhouette Software and traced it, fiddling with the settings until I got a version I was happy with. I also had to simplify the cut lines and delete a bunch of edit points to make the shape manageable. I used this tutorial from Silhouette School (love that website!) to learn to trace images. I use this function all.the.time. I even trace shapes from my library if I need an outline. Such a versatile function!  

Once I had the top wing portion and the bottom petal portions created, I found some other orchid shapes in the Silhouette Design Store I could use to create the rest of the orchid shape. I cut them out, inked them for dimension, and glued them together. 

The vase was really easy to put together. I inked the paper with several colors to give it a cement look and then glued the pieces together. Inside the vase is floral foam to hold the wire stems. Next time I would put the floral foam inside before I put the vase together. It was a little tricky getting the floral foam inside the narrow top. I also would have liked to have weighted the bottom with something so it wasn’t quite so light. I did pour some of the little pebbles in the bottom, but that’s not enough. 

I used the leftover hexagon from the top of the vase to cover the floral foam. I covered it in the black rocks and poked some holes where I wanted to place the stems. I then stuck the leaves in. I used hot glue to secure the stems and leaves and added more rocks to cover the glue. 

To create the two main stems, I took a three-foot piece of 12 gauge floral wire, folded it in half, and then twisted it to make it stiffer. For each of the flower stems, I took shorter pieces of 22 gauge wire and did the same thing and wrapped one end around the 12 gauge stem, leaving the other end free. One branch for each flower or bud. Then I wrapped the whole thing in floral tape to make it look like one stem. The twists in the wire give the stem a cool, natural texture. The flowers are hot glued to each of the smaller stems. 

The leaves were simple. I wanted a leaf that was similar to the Egret Orchid’s actual leaves, and found one in the Silhouette Design Store. I elongated them in Design Studio and cut them in a medium green paper. Then added several different green inks to give each of them dimension. I cut lengths of 22 gauge wire and attached them to the back of the leaves with hot glue. I left the wire longer than the leaf so I could use it to stick into the floral foam. When the glue was dry, I used the wire to shape the leaf so they had some life. 

I’m pleased with how the paper Egret Orchid stems turned out. Figuring out how to do the flowers took me a long time, so I’m really happy with how they turned out. I learned some things and next time I’ll do some things differently, but I thought this little project turned out pretty good. 

Materials Used: 

So there you have it. Pretty paper Egret Orchid stems for Christmas. And they won’t ever die. 🙂

Simple Winter Flocked Teardrop Door Swag

Winter Flocked Teardrop Door Swag

Today I’m sharing my simple winter flocked teardrop door swag I made for my front door. As you can see in the photos, I have a very cheery bright yellow door. Normally I love it, but it makes using traditional holiday colors a little difficult. The wreath I’ve used in years past wouldn’t work on this door. I prefer traditional holiday colors with lots of green and pops of red and white, and perhaps touches of other colors mixed in. But with this new-to-me yellow door, I was not loving the idea of using green and red.

I’ve been searching for something that would work and came across this lovely flocked pine teardrop door swag. I love the big flocked pine cones. I wanted it to have a little more body so I added a few more pine picks with smaller pine cones using floral wire I had on hand. Then I added a sparkly white ribbon to finish it off.  I looped the ribbon three times (twisting it so the sparkle was on the outside). I used a piece of floral wire around the center to form the bow and attach it to the swag. The long ends of the ribbons are a separate piece that I attached with floral wire. It came together easily and thanks to good a Michael’s sales and coupons the whole hanging was less than the original price of the swag by itself. 

I think the winter flocked teardrop door swag works well on my cheery yellow door and will be nice even after Christmas. 

Winter Flocked Teardrop Door Swag

What kind of holiday projects are you working on? 

xoxo