Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Another Baby Headband


Fair warning: This is going to be a pretty long post. I guess I just have a lot to share today, and a lot of that requires background information to explain it properly. So here goes...you've been warned!
Been working on a few new hair accessories lately and some other projects I haven't got around to posting yet. First off I want to share a cute little headband I made for my adorable baby niece because I already have pics uploaded for that. The reason for that is twofold: number one, one of my kids has a performance coming up at school and I needed to clear space on my memory card to record it, which is how come I had to upload all the pics on my SD card to the computer. But the second, and SUPER EXCITING reason, is because I finally got a new laptop! Woohoo! Just so you understand how huge this is, allow me to provide some background. When my ancient desktop died of old age several years ago, I couldn't afford a new one. I was lucky to get a laptop gifted by a very special person who got a new one and didn't need the old one any more. I have been using that for the past few years and it's been through a lot with me. Spills, crumbs, drops, and two babies who liked to sit on my lap all day long while using it. At some point, the battery quit working and it could only be used while plugged in. Then the cord got ruined, fixed up with electrical tape, ruined again, fixed again, ruined again fixed again, several times until I had no choice but to order a cheap new Chinese power pack off of ebay. The little metal thingy that goes into the hole in the computer (correct terminology sadly eludes me) to connect to power did not fit tightly in the hole, so you had to be really careful lest it moved slightly and you cut power to the computer. Happened several times. Then I scored a used but name brand factory original power supply from someone who was way past using computers of advanced age and no longer needed it. The kids attacked the keys several times over the years and quite a few were broken and could not be replaced, so I have been living without a space bar, window key, number four, and several letters for a long time. That computer also does not have a memory card slot, so in order to upload pics, I had to pull out a separate memory card reader that consisted of two parts that had to be fitted together and then plugged into the computer. This reader was getting on in years, so it was tricky getting it to communicate with the computer, and then you had to hope the connection would not be suddenly dropped while using it. Plus there was always the danger one of the kids would pass by and pull on the thing, aborting the whole process right in the middle of it. And, it took FOREVEEEEERRRRRR. So you see why I hated it so much, right? Best of all, my old laptop is still running....wait for it...drumroll please....WINDOWS XP! For realz. So...yeah. By the way, XP is my favorite operating system ever. I still love it and I don't think I missed out on anything by skipping Windows 7. I used 7 frequently at my mom's house and I totally prefer XP over that. Bite me. Anyway, three years ago I started saving up for a new laptop. Bit by bit, slowly slowly. I did not want to just buy some cheapy thing the minute I could afford it...I don't buy laptops every day (you got that from this post already, right?) and whatever I get had to be up-to-date enough to last me several years at least. So I knew I needed a fairly reasonable budget to work with. Finally this year I was able to take advantage of some really great holiday season sales and now I'm working Windows 8.1 on my sleek new compu-buddy as we speak. It has a nifty little memory card reader hidden right inside its shiny new body and the process is now painless, so I can cautiously tell you to expect an increase in pictures moving forward. No promises, though! Anyhoo, back to business. The headband I made for my niece - great-niece, actually; her mom's my actual niece - is made of charcoal grey felt and has two cute little flowers on a narrow black elastic band.


 I'm not sure how well you can see because it's such a dark color, but they are two different types of flowers on there. The one on the left, it looks like a wild rose to me, came about after much trial and error. I was desperate to make a pretty little rose, and collected several tutorials from around the web. But none of the styles I tried came out looking anything like the picture. I couldn't possibly allow anything so flawed to touch that sweet baby's head, so I kept trying. Finally, I came upon THIS one, and I felt like I'd hit the jackpot when it actually WORKED. I added a lighter grey leaf at the edge of it which I just freehand cut out of a piece of fake grey leather I had lying around from an old school project one of my kids brought home a long time ago (no they did not mind getting rid of the project and harvesting its usable body parts, I would never destroy something precious to a child). The other flower is actually modeled after a store-bought headband I have. I cut a wide strip of felt, folded in half lengthwise to create a narrower strip, and cut little horizontal slits about 3/4 of the way through the width of the folded strip at equal intervals all along the fold line. Just like this (right edge is folded edge):










 Then I just rolled up the folded strip, gluing along the edge without the slits. I then turned a little scrap of striped grey and white fabric into two little leaf-triangles just by folding and gluing under the edges. When I put the two flowers together side by side, I decided it needed a third, larger leaf on the side from the same grey faux leather as the rose. I glued the leaves to the backs of both flowers and glued the flowers to a wide strip of felt. I used a plain adult-sized black elastic headband from a multi-pack (either from Goody or scunci, can't remember which) and cut it down to size. I glued the open edges to the bottom of the felt strip that had the flowers on it, added extra glue for reinforcement all over the top of the seam, and then glued an identical strip over the elastic, sandwiching the edges in between the two pieces of felt. Aaaaaaaaand, done! I would love to post a picture of my niece wearing this headband, but unfortunately she was being a diva and refused to let me get a good one. I think she wanted me to bribe her, like with diamonds or something. But I was too afraid she might swallow them, being only seven months old. Ha! Whatever, you'll have to take my word for it - it looks really, really cute.