Felt Barrettes fit for a Fairy Princess

My 3 year old, like most 3 year olds, is not big on the sleep thing. Her new nap avoidance strategy is coming up with cool things to do so I won't put her to bed. This afternoon she said "Mom, I need some fairy barrettes." I wasn't sure what that meant, but she clarified for me that fairy barrettes "have orange flowers." You learn something new every day!

Unfortunately for my 3 year old, she still had to take her nap, but she fell asleep to the promise of fairy barrettes when she woke up-- I had a project to do. Since this was an unplanned thing, I had to rely on materials that I already had on hand. Luckily I have been collecting some felt to play with in crafty projects, and it turned out to be perfect for creating flowery barrettes fit for a fairy princess.

Materials:

-  barrettes and/ or ponytail holders

- several colors of felt

- scrap t-shirt fabric (had some leftover from my Upcycled T-shirt Throw Pillow Project)

- buttons (for embellishment)

- paint or glitter pens (for embellishment)

- scissors
- hot glue gun and glue sticks

I started by cutting out flowers from the felt, and layering colors. I found it helpful to double up the fabric on the base piece to add a little extra rigidity. Then, I hot glued all the layers of the design together to make a felt medallion.

In most cases, I just glued the medallion directly to the barrette. On the bendy barrettes, I got the most stability from mounting the flower on one corner, where the barrette is a little thicker. The bar barrette was great for a centered design since it had so much surface available for anchoring the felt. The ponytail holder required an extra piece of felt to help anchor the medallion. A generous layer of hot glue helped to keep this nice and stable-- it worked a lot better than I expected!




After the first few, I decided to deviate a little from the orange flowers request. These came out a lot cuter than I expected, and I wanted to try out some other design ideas that I had. To the left you can see the results of my experimentation. These barrettes were super easy and surprisingly fun to make; I am eager to go buy some more barrettes because the possibilities are endless. Older children could even help by picking out colors, painting designs with a fabric pen or cutting out shapes!




When my daughter woke up from her nap, she was very excited about her barrettes (yay, cool mommy points!). She wore them around for the rest of the afternoon, and they held up well. To the right is a picture of her modeling.

Happy crafting for all those fairy princesses out there!