Happy solstice, friends! The summer solstice, also known by other names like the equinox, Litha, Midsummer, and “the longest day of the year,” is a pretty big deal for a lot of people, myself included! I think it’s important to celebrate nature and the changing of the seasons and since I’ve been looking forward to summer all through the cold Chicago winter, I’m super pumped that it’s finally here. (Southern hemisphere friends, I know you’re just getting into winter and… I’m sorry. Maybe this post will help keep you warm?)

There are plenty of things you can do to celebrate the summer solstice! You can spend some time in nature, leave a gift of birdseed or other snacks for the local wildlife (but be careful you don’t attract, like, bears), cook a meal using fresh veggies and herbs, light a candle and spend some time in reflection over the year that’s passed, or do a tarot reading to help you navigate the season ahead (using a fun and summery tarot spread, perhaps? 😉 ). But as a gal who loves any excuse to dress like a woodland creature, I decided to make a flower crown this year to get in the spirit of summer! It was super easy to make and although it looks a little wonky and you can totally see the floral tape in spots, life is all about ~embracing imperfection~ (or whatever, just don’t make fun of my sad little crown, I tried!!)

So I made a little tutorial to show you how to make one, too. I used fake flowers because I wanted mine to last, but you can totally use real flowers with this same technique if you’d like. Learn from my mistakes and become the flower fairy you’ve always wanted to be!

 

What you’ll need:

– flowers, fake or real

– floral tape

– floral wire

– scissors

– your head

** A note about fake flowers: be sure you pick ones that won’t fall apart too easily! Some of the ones I thought were really pretty came disconnected from the stem really easily, and you need some stem to work with for this. You can use all different kinds of flowers if you want, but I wanted a more uniform look so I picked the same kind in a few different colors. ALSO, be sure you find flowers with a green stem! Preferable one that’s a similar color green to the floral tape and wire so it blends in better, but as long as they’re not wildly different colors you should be fine.

Step 1: Take your floral wire and wrap it around your head where you’d like your crown to go. I wrapped it around twice to make it a little sturdier, and I’d probably recommend that you do it at least twice, too. Make it a little looser than the measurement of your head, since the flowers are going to bulk it up and make it a little bit smaller than the wire on its own!

Step 2: Trim your flowers so that you have a few inches of stem to work with. Not going to lie, the greenery on these made them a pain in the buns to work with. If I do this in the future I’d probably pick a flower with just a plain stem but then get some added greenery to use to fill in gaps if needed. The greenery on these definitely had a cool effect, but made it super hard to tape down!

Step 3: Wrap the entirety of your wire with the floral tape. Floral tape is weird and it seems like it won’t be sticky, but it sticks to itself and works out really well! This step is just to be sure the wires stay together and no sharp bits are sticking out to poke you in the head.

Step 4: Start taping your flowers to the wire with the floral tape. I tried to cover the tape in the little leaves but you can still totally see it, whoops.

Step 5: Work your way around the flower crown, layering flowers as you go so that they cover up the tape as much as possible. You can have fun with how you arrange them – I went with a simple alternating pattern because I wanted mine to be pretty even, but you could go crazy and mix-and-match if you wanted!

Step 6: Once you’ve completed the circle, you can go back in and fill in any gaps with more flowers. Then you’re done! The floral tape isn’t the MOST secure thing in the world, but I wore mine out in the sun all day and it stayed together so that’s a good sign. I’m planning on fixing the loose spots with some good old-fashioned Scotch tape on top of the floral tape.

And here’s what it looked like on!

I’d like to thank the Snapchat “pretty” filter for always making me look bomb. It was super fun to wear and a total stranger complimented me on it, so if YOU like getting compliments from strangers, you should probably make yourself a flower crown. And then send me a picture of it!! I’d love to see what you come up with!

Do you have anything fun planned for the solstice? 🙂 Drink some summery lemonade for me!