behind the post: Vintage inspired Headband

I thought it might be fun to take you "behind the post" to show you how an inspiration piece turns into a project/craft. Just a warning, I am very indecisive, as you will see....

This is my inspiration for this project. This is a tag from a Graphic 45 sheet of scrapbook paper from their new "On the Boardwalk" line that just came out. See that rad headband? Pretty cool, huh. I saw that and my heart started thumping like crazy. (does that happen to anyone else? please tell me I'm not the only one.) This is how it all starts!

After seeing that at work (I just quit my part time job at the local scrapbook store), I went home and rummaged through my fabric to find something to make a "fabric fan" out of. I found some chocolate brown fabric scraps that I thought would work well. It's a heavy cotton fabric.

 

 In my first attempt to make a fabric fan, I cut about 2"x8" strip of fabric. I then folded and ironed into an accordion style pleats every 1/2".

 

 I pinched ends together to see how big the fan was getting, I then cut off the excess fabric when it reached the size I wanted.

  

 I then sewed the ends a couple times. My sewing machine was a champ going through all those layers of fabric. (my cheapy sewing machine pleasantly surprised me!)

At this point, I was starting to wonder what I could pair this this little fabric fan. I originally thought a fabric flower or maybe even a pretty silk flower.

  

But then I was at the craft store and found a pair of these flower clips on clearance for 99 cents. They might work and for that price, I couldn't pass them up.

 

  I compared the fabric fan next to the flower clip and the fan is too thick to fit under the clip and lay flat. So I need to start over.

 

Made another fabric fan and folded the creases every 1/4" this time.

  

Smaller one works with the flower clip. The thickness is good this time around.

  

Then soaked the fan in Stiffen Stuff and let dry. While I was waiting for it to dry, I decided I didn't like the brown flower clip with the fan. I decided they looked like a shooting star together or something. (the flower had 5 points and then the fan made it a perfect shooting star....) So then I get this idea to try making a fan out of tulle.

  

But the tulle didn't go well with the brown flower clip either. The tulle fan was too small and dainty compared the the chunky flower clip. But I didn't want the tulle fan to go to waste.

  

So I put the tulle fan with a brown singed flower I made several weeks ago and make a cute clip with it. I thought they went very well together. 

But I still didn't have anything for the brown fan. I needed something round. to offset the angles of the brown fan.I started thinking along the lines of buttons, zipper flower ;). etc. Not liking anything.

  

And then I saw this white flower hair clip I made awhile ago. Perfect! So I hot glued the brown fan onto the back.

I felt that the flower clip/fan combo needed something to "anchor" it in my hair so that I didn't have a random large accessory floating in my hair. So I was on the look out for a headband.

 

 And I found this brown headband laying around.(yes, I have plenty of headbands just laying around :)

Now I need to photograph the final product.
I take the majority of my photos. But if I need a model, I pull Davis's arm and get him to take the pics while I model the item. Well, this time, Davis wasn't able to take the pics in time due to his crazy schedule, so I asked one of my good friends to be my model.

But I haven't quite finished going through all 43 photos I took. (that's actually a small photo shoot for me. Sometimes my projects take 2-3 photo shoots and hundreds of pics. This one wasn't too bad to photograph.)

Check back a little later and I'll have the "final post" up for you to see how it turned out.
**added later: click here to see the final product**