Rosemary Cake: Tiara Instructions

Tiara Instructions

Ok so I promised to try to explain how I do my tiara's. Now please do not think that this is the only way, its my way and a way I find that works for me. Experiment, when you are feeling a bit more at ease with your wire then play with it.

Firstly you need to get your equipment together

you will need

1 x Tiara Band, hair comb or some kind of base for your needs (about £1.10)

Beads, if you want a more delicate looking tiara or fascinator then use beads or crystals of about 4-8mm, bigger ones will produce a chunkier tiara. ( I spend about £1.50 at the most!)

Pliers - these need to be flat nosed to help with sharp ends (about £3-9 depending on what model etc)

Cutting pliers or scissors to cut the wire with - please be careful if you use scissors as it will blunt them eventually.

0.4mm or 0.5mm wire these are great thickness because they hold shape and twist best, thin also to fit through the smallest of beads. (£2.00 roughly for 15metres see below)

1. Cut a piece of your wire about a metre long. I find that if you do it any longer it can get notty. Thread your first bead onto the end of the wire, about 15cm from the end and fold the wire so that the bead is in the centre of the fold. Begin twisting the wire between your fingers until the twist is tight and about 4/5 cm long (you can vary this depending on how tall you want your spikes to be). This will leave a small piece of wire and your long piece of wire at the bottom.

2. Thread another bead on the wire until it is about 4/5cm away from the bottom of the first twist you did. Do the same as before, fold the wire so that the bead is in the centre and begin to twist downwards until it looks a bit like this.

3. You need to keep doing the last two steps until you have about the same length of leftover wire at each end. You will probably have about 5 twisted bits, one thing, try to make sure that when twisting the wires down that you leave no gaps between each twist.

4. For a full tiara you will want to make about 9 of these bunches. If you just want to make a fascinator like the one below then you will needed maybe 5 or 6 with less bunches.

To attach them to the tiara band, give each stem a twist and then twist the ends tightly around the band, start at the centre to give it an even position. Use your pliers to flatten any sticky out bits or sharp ends.