Star Lace Dreams: Madonna crown tutorial!

So, it was requested that I do Madonna crown tutorial like the one I'm wearing in this picture:

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the process as I made it, and I haven't the time to make another, so I'm going to do my absolute best to explain it with words and MS Paint!

So let's start with materials:

Here we have...
- newspaper
- wire snips
- a thin plastic headband, preferably with the little grippy teeth
- bamboo sticks
- E6000
What I forgot to put in the picture...
- spray paint of your choice, gold is most popular

I should also add that there is a less time consuming, but slightly more messy method if you ditch the E6000 for hot glue and thread. I'll cover that method at the end of the tutorial.

So, first thing's first, we need to arrange the bamboo sticks at the length and style you want them. In the picture, they look a little spread apart. When you lay them out, line them up right next to each other. I'm showing them as I arranged them, but some prefer to use fewer sticks, leave them all the same length, etc. When it comes to length, it depends on how dramatic a look you are going for. Mine are quite long, I think five or six inches, but I've seen others that are very cute at a shorter length.

Note that if you make them longer, you must be extremely mindful not to poke someone! I made mine with the pointy ends out. In retrospect, this is only a good idea if you're making shorter sticks. I loved the look but was constantly worried about getting someone in the eye!

Next, you want to tape down your sticks in place just over where you want to cut them (blue line) then mark where you want them cut with a sharpie (red line).

Untape your bamboo sticks and start snipping! If you're using good, sharp snips, they should cut nice and clean. If not, and you have little bamboo strings, go through with a pair of regular scissors and clean them up. Make sure that as you snip the sticks, if they are different lengths like mine, you lay them back out in the same order!

Arrange the sticks around the headband, don't glue, just lay them out. Leave at least a centimeter or two of space between each stick. I learned the hard way that if you don't and they are too close, they will overlap each other when the headband expands on your head. Also be sure to mark on your headband where the tops of your ears are. You don't want to keep getting poked in the ear!

Now that's in order, it's time for the fun part - gluing! I recommend doing this over some newspaper, so the glue doesn't drip onto your table or countertops. Start with the top, center stick. Put a little E6000 on a paper plate and dip the end of the stick in, planting it right at the top of your headband. Now, this stuff takes some time to dry. What I liked to do was lay down two sticks to support the other sticks while they were drying, and I would lay the headband down on top of it and work in small sections like this. In the picture, the red lines are the extra bamboo sticks supporting the ones drying.

Once you've glued all the sticks and they are sufficiently dry, I like to work a little extra E6000 all around the base one last time for security. Then once that's dry, you can take it outside, lay out some newspaper, and spray paint it!

Here's the other method I mentioned:

When it comes to the gluing process, use hot glue instead of E6000. You won't have to use support sticks, you can just hold it in place while it dries! Here's where this method isn't as great, though: the hot glue usually doesn't bond with the shiny, smooth plastic surface of the headband. To remedy this, you fill in the base with hot glue, like so:

Then you wrap the string around and around until it binds the glue to the headband.

Then you spraypaint! I would really only recommend this method if the base of the crown is going to be covered by flowers, bows, etc, arranged in your hair.

Here are some other inspiration photos!