Beaded Hair Ornaments

Posted by Dani on May 16, 2013

Here’s a little DIY that I made for my youngest last Christmas. We always try to give each other something homemade, and I made Isabel some sweet hair ornaments using beads and felt flowers. I’ll show the felt ones in another post. All these ornaments were pretty easy, and with a few inexpensive beading supplies the sky’s the limit in terms of what you can do.

Here are all the supplies you need:
1. hair elastics, hairpins, and hair bands from the dollar store
2. fine beading wire
3. various beads, also from the dollar store

I used both hard and soft hair bands for this project. All these different ornaments are wired onto the elastic, band, or hairpin.

The daisy type beaded flowers are easy. First choose the size of your petal and estimate how many beads will be required to create the petal. I used between 14 and 23 depending on the size of the bead. Here you can see the example of the gold coloured daisy I made with seed beads.

I strung 23 beads onto the wire, formed it into a petal shape, and then twisted the wire at the end of the petal to hold the shape firmly. I then strung another 23 beads onto one end of the wire, formed the petal shape, and twisted that closed. I continued until I had 5 petals. I used wire to connect the first and last petals, by twisting these together. Once this was done I strung on a few more beads and wrapped this part around the center part of the petals so that some beads covered the middle portion of the flower. Then I attached it to the hairpin by wrapping the wire securely around it. Sounds a little complicated, but once you have the beaded wire in your hand it’s quite easy to understand how to create the petals and form the flower.

This little flower was made in the same way, but I used bigger beads in a pattern to make 4 petals with 5 beads each. I didn’t add any beads for the middle because the beads were a little large.

This flower is made out of about 10 petals arranged randomly.

And this little guy is just a cluster of 4 or 5 larger beads.

These are very forgiving beading projects, perfect for a beginner, and all of the supplies are available from the dollar store. It’s hard to go wrong if you have some pretty beads to work with – basically any cluster of beads makes a sweet looking hair ornament. And it’s a perfect mother-daughter project next time you’re stuck indoors on a rainy day. Stay tuned for part 2 of the post where I show you some cute felt flower hair ornaments.