Seashell Crowns

Today was a blissfully slow day, a day of relaxing, doing whatever we felt like doing and a day of having our first go at making seashell crowns. It's something I've been wanting to try for the past month but never got around to it until now.

A couple of weeks ago we foraged some willow which I had hoped would work to make the base of the crown and they couldn't have been more perfect, I will be using willow a lot more in the future as it was so incredibly easy to work with!

This was meant to be a project that me and Nixie worked on together but she wasn't in the mood as she was too busy playing with her toys and being in her imaginary world with Forrest. So instead I made them as little gifts for them. But in the process of making them while using the hot glue gun Forrest decides it was the perfect time to try to feed our cat more food and at the same time throw it all over the floor and I couldn't stop him because I was in the middle of gluing things and burning my fingers when I finally was able to stop him he had already stopped and left a little hurricane in his wake! But at least the house didn't burn down or something like that and I was able to finish the crowns, it was actually a really nice thing to do and it gave me a tiny bit of unexpected me time.

This was my first try and they can definitely be improved but I really enjoyed making them, it's all about enjoying the process afterall isn't it?! I will definitely be making more of them.

Materials :
Willow twigs
Florist wire
Shells
Some other greenery (optional)
Scissors
Hot glue gun

Instructions :
1. Make the base of your crown. First wrap some wire around two pieces of willow and then wrap one of them around the other until it reaches the right size (I would go a bit bigger than you think you need because as it gets thicker it will become smaller, I learned this from my mistake and had to redo Nixie's and even so next time I would go bigger still as it was still a bit on the small size) . Wrap some more wire around it and continue wrapping the willow until you have your desired thickness. Then wrap some more wire at the end.

 2. Next we went outside to gather some greenery from the tree outside our house and I added a bit of hot glue to hold this in place and then just wrapped it around and around the same way I did with the willow.

 3. Next I chose my main shell that would go in the centre and I used my all-time favourite treasures: my scallop shells and glued them in place. Then I continued to glue shells all around the crown.

4. Afterwards I went around and added some more glue into each corner of the shell to make sure it was in there good. Then let dry for a couple of minutes and you're finished!

Then I tried to get some photos of Nixie and Forrest wearing them but Forrest wasn't really in the mood and kept trying to kiss Nixie's head but I did manage a few!