Every Monday my daughter's charter program has a day of homework instead of in-school activities. She's usually done with her homework in less than two hours and then proceeds to hang around the house bored. Enter mom project! Not all mom projects are fun for tweens anymore (they tend to not just want to do a craft for the craft sake). But a hair clip tugs on their fashion conscious heartstrings. You then have a good hour-long activity wherein the tween has fun and likes hanging out with you!
Go to any craft show or etsy store and you'll see them: beautiful vintage inspired hair clips made out of fake plastic flowers and running $8-$20 dollars. It can get pricey if you or your daughter starts wanting to collect them. They are super easy to make though, and make a great activity for the glue gun fearless tween or teen. A mini glue gun is really pretty inexpensive these days and with sticks can run you as cheap as $5.00. Just make sure neither of you forget how hot it is!
If you aren’t the most creative types in the world, don’t worry about it and take a little trip to pinterest. There’s a ton of photos of hair clips to help inspire you along your way.
In our household, we've always got a junk drawer in the kitchen and an 'art studio' space in the garage. Anytime we have a tiny toy piece or glitter or stickers or charms, we save them for this rainy day project.
At any dollar store or craft store, you can pick up silk flowers of any color you choose. Craft stores also sell silk flowers and blank barrettes. We’ve used Michael’s, Wal-Mart, and Oriental Trading Company in the past, as well as thrift stores to find silk flowers and blank metal barrettes. Some places also sell silk flowers or material in a flower formation for pins. We get those too.
We've also saved scraps of fabric (my daughter is a quilter), bobby pins, and broken jewelry. After we’ve gathered all our materials together, we start looking for good color combinations and start building our mini bouquet hair clips.
We plug in the glue gun and put a stick through it. It's essential to make sure you put it on a safe surface like a paper towel on the kitchen table. We cut off the backs of silk flowers and make them flat. Sometimes we take cardboard to the backs of them to make them sturdier. We use that semi-flat base and start to come up with centers for our flowers. Buttons work well, as do self-adhesive rhinestones or glitter or charms. We tie ribbons on them or put material under the flowers to make them really pop out!
Miss Miriam, who does many pin-up looks, has a great little tutorial on YouTube to follow:
My daughter had one of those light bulb moments when she realized she now has a cool Christmas gift idea for her cousins and friends!
The tween years can be a difficult time. They just don’t think we’re cool anymore. But appealing to their overwrought sense of fashion might just be the answer to the need for bonding time.
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