Dressing the Ladies' Hair

Karina came up from NYC to help with our dinner tasting and spend some time with us. Ellie took Saturday off from work, but left Karina & I together to make the hairclips that Karina and Carrie will be wearing. I have to admit to being VERY nervous about this--cutting those beautiful peacock feathers I'd bought was incredibly stress-inducing, I was terrified I'd make a mistake.

But K had taken the lead in making the facinators for another friend's wedding last year, and was totally confident in both of our abilities. Our plan of attack: get coffee, lay out all the supplies, and each of us make one--she'd make hers, I'd make Carrie's. Here's K just as we're getting started:

I had the feathers, hot glue, black felt and scissors--she had brought some costume jewelry she had lying around, as well as some beads  & other bobbles for embellishment (look, you can see my card box in that pic!--I'm storing smaller stuff in there for safety).

Each clip has 2 feathers and an old earring as it's bling aspect. I feel a little guilty not using any of the other beads & bobbles K brought, but I think they might have taken away from the clips (and we really couldn't think of a good way to incorporate them). Here are the cut feathers, the felt support backing and a bunch of the beads we had--you can kind of see the earrings towards the background of the picture. Man, I was NERVOUS about cutting those feathers down, but I did it, slowly. I kind of messed up in the length, then when I was gluing the top feather down, but it actually came up fairly well & I was able to re-position it.

How we did it: we cut a teardrop out of black felt as a base, then glued one of the feathers to it. We positioned the other feather on top and slightly off-center & glued that down. K was really thinking and came up with the idea that, since they will be on different sides of the altar, the guests will see different sides of their heads, so it might be best to have the clips facing different directions! How glad am I she was able to help with this?!?! After everything was glued, we stuck an earring through the bottom, glued it to prevent it from spinning and bent down the post. I still need to find good clips to attach to them--K said I want ones with teeth to help with the hold, but I've yet to find any; the hunt is still on!