Fancy Fabric Flower Hair Clips ... say that five times fast! I dare you! I double dog dare you!

So, several months ago my two year old started talking about her upcoming birthday. Seriously, it's been months. I asked her about themes several times, but she always said, "I'm going to have a PINK party." As in the color, not the singer. Her third birthday is now rapidly approaching. Only six more days, I can't even believe it. Luckily, it falls mid week so that buys me a few more days to party plan. It's going to be an explosion of pink goodness. I wanted to share with you the announcements I made for her party, because, to say the least, I am thrilled with how they turned out. They are TOTALLY un-frumpy. Mmm hmm.

It all started with the idea of PINK as a theme. I was an English Minor in college, so I decided to muster up whatever skills I gained from that aspect of my education and create a catchy rhyme for her invites. I came up with, "Oh my goodness I didn't think, that time would fly by in a blink, but it has, oh gosh, oh gee, come Pretty in Pink, Hadlee's turning three!" Poetry, I know. HA! (And I paid HOW MUCH for that degree?)

Next, I KNEW that there would be a photograph on her invite. Although you cannot tell from my less than mediocre food pictures, I am a professional photographer in real life.

Of people, not food.

I snapped a shot of my little girl recently standing by the window of our back door and loved it. It was mainly of her face, and I knew I wanted to use it as the invite. That's how I got the idea for including hair clips on the invites. The little girls could keep them and wear them to the party if they could come. Clipping them onto the invite would make it look as if my little girl were wearing the clip in the picture. Cute!

So, I found this awesome tutorial on mrspriss and decided to give it a go. Check out her tutorial, then come back and check out my results. Awesome.



This is the overall idea of what I came up with. I followed the mrspriss tutorial to make the flowers. One of the comments on her site said to try using a candle and tweezers. Genius. It makes the process much easier and less painful. I used the extra long tweezers from my surger which made it even better. Don't get the material too close to the flame because it will singe too much or burn, and your fingers will hate you for it too. I also suggest having a little more fabric than you plan on using. You will have some flowers that cut out crappy or don't singe right. It's better to be prepared than have to run to Walmart, yuck, and scrounge for any material that will work. Yes, this happened to me half way through.


Some other handy dandy tips: First, instead of trying to cut out each piece individually, the route I originally, and foolishly, took, fold your material over itself however many times you need to create however many pieces you need, be it the flowers or petals. Once folded, you can pin the layers together in the middle and cut around the pins. Your pieces still probably won't be identical, unless you're WAY better than me, but imperfection is pretty in this project, so no worries. We're going for un-frumpy, not perfect, remember?


Second, accessorize. I had some net-ish material (I don't know what it's called, I'm only a wanna be seamstress,) feathers, and little scrapbooking gems on hand from past projects. I got the feathers and gems at Sierra's, I'm sure Michael's would also sell them. The fabric came from Joanne's. Use whatever you have access to that fits your fancy. Or your un-frumpy.



Last, add an alligator clip and clip it anywhere. On a headband, directly in hair, somewhere else, on an invitation. Viola. It made my idea complete, and everyone commented on how cute the invites turned out. I should tell you, I hot glued everything, but needle and thread wouldn't be much harder, also, I used CS3 to put the invite design together, and ordered the invites as postcards from Costco. They turned out great. Most of the ones I made clips for were for people who live close, so I just dropped them off as opposed to sending them. Long distance ones I left the clip off and mailed. They were still cute without the clip, but the clip was SUCH a nice touch. Thank you mrspriss! I plan on using her tutorials again. The yarn wreath is in the plans. YAY!