DIY: Rose + Antlers Headband

As part of my Halloween costume, I had to make an antler headband, because the costume store options are kind of ugly and cartoony. Handmade options can be pricy and don't have that customized flare.

They weren't going to get here in time either, so it's either something silly from a costume store or something pretty and personally customized. (Since I always have to take the difficult route!)

The tutorial I used the tutorial posted above, and it's wonderful. The only difficult part for me with these was actually gluing the antlers to the headband and wrapping it all in floral tape. I hate floral tape! It leaves a sticky residue on my fingers that's really a pain and I have some tips for the whole ordeal.

How mine turned out.

Tips for Antler-Making...

• Pick a good glue, because seriously, E6000 can suck for this if you aren't careful with the base of the antlers and the roses. Hot glue, or another strong glue that can handle pipe cleaners and flowers (NOT superglue since it makes everything crusty, ew), will work wonderfully. I still love E6000, but it made quite a mess since it wouldn't really cooperate with the pipe cleaners while I was trying to hold them in place before clamping them down. I was able to glue the roses back-to-back with E6000 but trying to attach both roses in two rows on the headband? No. Not happening. Not going to work! I pulled out the hot glue gun to get the roses attached to the headband, which did work.

• Check your base. The base I made for the right antler was a little bit too big for the binder clip to fit over. Checking that your base is decently flat will likely help you when trying to clip it down! It will also give it a little bit of a sleeker look under all the floral tape.

•  Binder clips. Binder clips. Binder clips! These will hold the antlers in place while the glue does it's thing, since you can't really weigh them without ruining the headband. They also work amazingly well for clamping down any finicky floral tape ends.

• Translucent powder is a godsend for this project. Thanks to floral tape's residue, and the fact it sticks only to itself, means you will likely want to remove or reduce the stickiness from the tape before wear. It attracts lint very easily, so imagining what will happen during wear is rather unpleasant... This is where translucent powder comes in handy! It sticks to the tape, and reduces the stickiness, which makes handling oh so much easier.

• Reference pictures for your antlers are awesome. I opted more for vector samples, since I'm quite nit picky and tend to work better from vector examples than actual samples.

• If you use roses, you'll want to take the roses apart piece by piece then glue them back together the way I mentioned for my Spikes + Roses tutorial since they won't stay perfectly together after being removed from the stems. I should really photograph the process for this.

• Needle-nose pliers are great, since pipe cleaners can be a little bit of a pain to work with, mainly when you have teeny bits like I do. Annoying, but they actually give a little more of a realistic look in my opinion.

That's about all I have for the antlers! They're really pretty simple when you take the tips and use the tutorial. The simplicity of the tutorial and her method is just wonderful. I love my new headband, it's going to be great when I finish up my costume for Friday. Now the truly hard part: waiting for all the glue to dry and/or cure. Blegh.

PS: The wig is from Epic Cosplay. It's their Hestia wig in "Princess Pink," to replace my EDP since I accidentally ruined it. It'll be remade into a dread wig later on though.

SPOOKEHDOOM