Fairy Headbands Tutorial and School Fair Ideas

Here is how to make the beautiful kids head bands that you saw in my OWOH drawing.  These you will see were first made for a school fair I helped with.  They make alot of money and require little costs so a really good idea to have everyone looking festive.

What you need is thin stretch cotton which is so cheap, the way we are going to cut it is so the stretch goes down the strip, you want you head band to stretch

each length should be 2'' or 5cm wide, its ok if its bigger but too thin and you head band will be too tiny to hold flowers

and the length is about 35''or 90cm long, again it dosent matter too much with extremely fine details.  Each head band will need 3 strips, you will be doing a standard plait, so spend a whole night cutting and layer the fabric on top of each other so one cut cuts about 4 layers, way faster and the thin fabric allows for it

tie a loose knot leaving enough to grasp, I clip mine to a clip board when doing mass plaiting, and all you do is plait, 

I used to try to turn in the edges but in the end you dont really notice the difference, so just plait, firmly but loosely too, we are putting flowers in the plaits.  I also made some with 3 colours instead of one and they came out kinds 'Olivia Newton John', it wasent the best look!

re plait the tied end so they are relatively the same end bits.  this is where you can change it up because it will depend on the size of head, so for bigger kids or adults have a longer plait, and for little kids have longer tails and smaller plait

tieing the ends is done seperately, donot tie one knot, it is bulky and ugly, just find partners and tie in double knots, you end up with a puff ball of tassels which looks way cuter

Voila! now for flowers

best done by an adult and when not already on heads

weave flowers into the the plait, here you can get creative and do a side bunch, and also side bunch with tassels underneath, or you can make it a wreath and put flowers all around the front and back  Do you like the spider bindi!

sturdy flowers are best, there are some that wilt too fast and dont look so good, so find long lasting ones

and they are super comfy so the kids wear them all day.  If doing these for a fair do some boys colour, we had green and red, the boys got these minus the flowers and spent the day being ninjas, the different colours meant they had different teams (not using the word gangs here!! haha), the boys loved them and there was one boy who I saw every day at the bus stop for the next few weeks with his head band still on! success, thats the great thing about these, you can re use them over and over once you have one, a very lasting purchase, and nooooo!!! plastic!!!!

Here is the school gala I did, as well as plaiting 100s of head bands at night, what you need to do is get your flowers.  I glued plastic cups into tray boxes and the day before the gala went for a drive around my community to peoples houses asking for flowers, we had sooo many, and there are plenty of roadside ones too.  Just fill the cups with water, and put the flowers straight in, that way they last and are all ready for the next day

We sold our headbands for $2nz each, the kids pick a head band and the flowers they like and we would put them together, these photos, (so old scholl, no digital then!) were taken before the gala got going, hence I have no photos of afterwards or during the gala, it was insane!!!  insanely busy

We used my gypsy tent, just a gazebo with sari walls that are velcroed on, we did face painting inside, fairy head bands out front and also sold fairy food to eat at our fairy cafe, where Im sitting at the front

this setting is sooo easy to make, just need a pretty sign painted on a slice of wood

and the table and chairs is made from stumps, one has a circle of ply wood as the table

and little round cushions to go on the stumps, where are the stump chairs you say??? well um we burnt them in the fire last winter when we ran out of wood! eek  haha its ok, we can make more in a jiffy!

Another wonderful idea was the wishing tree, it was a wattle tree which I stripped all the leaves off but the dainty ends, its in a bucket of stones to stand up and it has a basket of pretty cut ribbons sitting at its base,  all you had to do was take a ribbon and tie it to the tree, the sign was made from cut ply wood and was tied to the tree

wishes were free and very popular, especially with adults!!  Although I do remember a little girl coming up to me at the end of the day and saying  "Sheree, If I wished on the tree does that mean it will come true?"  in my absolute tiredness I asured her that yes it would, Kelly growled me when we got home because what if her wish was for her dead father to come back from heaven and I had just told her I was happening for sure!! so learn your lessons from me, and always answer "we will have to wait and see!!""  Afterwards I burnt the tree and really set those wishes free!  Hopefully hers was for a barbie and it came true!

So there are some ideas for your next school fair, its all very simple stuff and I find we had the right elements for everyone,

*a touch of free with the tree*

*creativity with the headbands*

*pampering feeling with the face painting*

*and yummy sugary goodness with the food*

Have fun with these ideas, does anyone want a more in depth tutorial on the gypsy tent, it is a huge asset to have, mine has done so many parties and is borrowed alot by others and then there is just magical daily life and camping, its very nice to have a magic tent.

So I thought I would do a give away pack of 3 headbands, so I will choose from comments a lucky winner



Next week I will announce the winner of these as well as the winners of the preserving labels from my "HARVEST MOON GODDESS" story

Its Saturday here and Im so glad to have Kel home so I can blog un interrupted for the morning, and even have time to visit a few too, its a beautiful day, a beautiful wet Autumn day that is.

Hope your weekends are going well

much love and creativity

xxx

Sheree