How to Make a Flower Crown

May Day Crown 2013

Last May Day, I was fortunate enough to receive one of four May Day gifts given by someone other than a Senior.  This came in the form of a May Day Crown, giving me the special privilege of "Page Duties".  Pages are four Freshman who follow around the President of the college dressed in a special costume during the morning festivities.  Other special privileges come with it as well, like attending the Senior Breakfast, going up the Rockefeller Towers to the roof, and walking in the May Day Parade.

As a sophomore, it was my duty to pass down the Crown to one of my Hell Babies.  That left me without a Crown for this May Day.  So, I got to make my own!  May Day Crowns (also known as tiaras or floral head toppers, as I like to say) are simply crowns of flowers.  A few days before May Day, the college has a special event for students to make May Day Crowns from real flowers, but that causes allergies and they are very impermanent.  My roommate and I decided to make our own permanent ones.

Supplies:
-Wire cutter
-Hot glue gun
-Hot glue sticks
-Scissors
-Ribbon
-Fake/plastic Flowers
-Any other small (fake) accessories, like butterflies or birds, leaves, etc.
-Some sort of wire to shape into a crown (pictured on right)

Step-by-step Guide:
1.  Plug-in hot glue gun and get it ready
2.  Cut your wire with enough room to make a full crown for your head, plus some extra to "close" the circle the crown must make
3.  You have a few options for closing your crown:  you can intertwine the wire around the whole crown to close it off as a circle (what my roommate did), you can just make a slight twist on either end to hold the wire in circle place and then solidify it with ribbon (what I did originally), or you can choose not to make a full circle and use ribbon to close the ends and soften the ends with hot glue or ribbon or both (as with others I've made in 2015 and the original one from 2013)
4.  If you choose the second option you will likely need a full spool of ribbon to cover your crown; start at one of the twisted ends and tie the ribbon on tightly; begin very tightly wrapping the ribbon and do not forget to flatten out the extra ribbon from the knot to cover it over with the wrappings or do not tie a not and rely on tightly wrapping; when you get to the end of the ribbon I suggest hot gluing it into place (you can still wrap a crown that is not a full circle)
5.  You can then add extra ribbon details around the crown as you like
6.  Arrange your flowers to your preference and then begin hot gluing them one at a time; I suggest using the small stubby (usually green attachment) on the flower as the part to glue to the crown so that the flowers face out, not up
7.  When done with the flowers, add extra accessories that fit your tastes
8.  Make sure that you use a generous amount of glue for each flower/accessory
9.  Pull away any loose hot glue pieces that get spiderwebby

My Final Product: