20ies Inspired Hairband

This April I was invited to a birthday party with a theme - the 20ies. Since I did have a fitting dress in black and white, I decided to make a hairband inspired by that time. I sadly didn't take step-by-step pictures, because I did it all in the car drive to the party, but it's pretty easy. All the materials were easily accesible (I actually bought most of what I needed at one store and I'm pretty sure the rest could be bought there as well) - I bought them here: http://idee-shop.de. But seeing that it's German, any other DIY store will serve just as well.

Materials:
- a ribbon (mine had to be silver, since I have black hair and the flowers were white, but I think a black one would actually look nicer on lighter hair)
- some artificial flowers (what you see on the picture above is, what's left of mine)
- 3-4 feathers (if soft or not is your choice, I liked the softer ones better though)
- pearls of varying size (the quantity depends on how long you want that strip of pearls to be - I used 15 for the inner loop and 23 for the outer)
- 1 big safety pin
- 2-4 little metal rings on one of the pictures (I don't know what they're called)
- optional: an elastic band (I didn't use it, since I wanted to knot my ribbon)

Tools: (not many really)
- needle and thread
- glue
- scissors

Step 1: Prepare
Cut off the artificial flowers - you don't really want to put up with the stem on the ribbon.
You should then choose your feathers and put the pearls on a string. As you can probably see on the picture from the back I did it the lazy way and just put them on one single string, varying size on the first fifteen and used the same size on the last 23. The metal rings are used instead of knotting the band, and just squeezed tightly when they're at the right position. I did that with my scissor, because I forgot to bring pliers and it works just as well (if you got them at hand, you really should use them though). If you decide to be lazy like me, remember to leave the pearls movable, so that - when separating the pearls at one place - there's still a 1-2 mm space between them.
If you should not decide to be lazy, just close off both strings with metal rings and see that the pearls fall nicely when pull them into a loop (it results in more sewing work - but not that it's much anyway).
In any case: The inner loop should contain less pearls than the outer one.

Step 2: Make a base
You should choose the place where you put on the application carefully if you have a limited amount of ribbon. Depending on where you put it, the knot goes elsewhere (I made that mistake, regrettably). To be safe - just put it in the middle of a metre of ribbon or something and cut both ends off in the end. That way you can still decide on which side you're going to wear it, when you're doing the feathers (or put them the wrong way round).
After you have chosen the segment to put the flowers on, push your safety pin through the band from one side. Now you can "thread" the flowers over the pin and arrange them as you like. Once you are satisfied with the way it looks, just push the pin through the ribbon again and close it. Make sure it's nice and tight, and that the ribbon is smooth behind the flowers.

Step 3: Decorate
The feathers are really easy to apply: just push them in between the ribbon and the safety pin behind the flowers, place a drop of glue where they cross over with the pin and you're done. The only thing you need to think about is, on which side you want to wear the application and angle them to the back of you head. Harder or bigger feathers pointing upwards would be wearable on both sides though, I think.
For the pearls there are (obviously) two ways:
First, for the lazy ones: Separate the pearls where you want the first loop to end and the second to begin and put one end through the safety pin's unmovable side. The space created by separating the pearls should be "around the metal" and at either end of the pin. I would suggest putting a drop of glue there as well - unless you want the pearls moving around all the time and destroying the loops. Then take both ends and sew them either to the front side of the ribbon -  that way you won't see the thread on the other side (since I only had black thread that was a problem). This is where you can vary if they are small, short loops like mine, or longer ones.
Second: Sew the pearl loops to whereever you think they look best. It is easier to vary the loops with this method, since you are not bound to the dimension of the safety pin.
If you have thread in the same color as the ribbon though I would suggest sewing them to the backside, so you don't have the metal rings gleaming out under the feathers.

optional: Step 4: Applying elastic band
To close the hairband you have the option of just knotting it in the back or sewing it together. If you decide to sew, I believe it's wise to put a little bit of elastic band in between, so that you can vary the placing of the headband on your head.


So that's it =). I hope you liked it. You could sew it all and not use a safety pin, but I wanted the option of taking it apart later, since it was more of a you-can-only-wear-this-once hairband (but I liked it too much to destroy it). So if the university throws another 20ies swing party I get to wear it again.
I think it goes best with one of the typical styles of the Twenties so I "made" myself short hair. There's a nice tutorial on it - if you want to see it, it's this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrI0BIockJI.
Have a lot of fun making this!