Dog Floral Crown

I recently saw the Julian Fellowes miniseries “Doctor Thorne” on Amazon Prime (which I binged in one sitting because it was that good), and the women in it wear the most glorious floral crowns. So of course I had to make one for my dog Fosse.

Fosse looks like she’d fit right in with the Doctor Thorne ladies.

Making a floral crown gave me an opportunity to use the new Sizzix Twist and Style tool from Eileen Hull. It’s a super easy way to twist wire (and lots of other things) together, and it worked beautifully to create both the wire loop of the crown as well as the stems for the flowers.

I twisted four 18-inch pieces of 20-gauge floral wire using the Twist and Style stool, and then made a loop out of it, bending the ends to make a “latch” for the crown. By twisting four pieces of wire together, I was able to make a strong loop that was easily shaped. You can’t get such a nice loop with just one 20-gauge wire — it’ll bend instead of curve. 

Then I moved on to the flowers. With the Twist and Style tool, I was able to make stems for the flowers. First, I bent a piece of floral wire in half and placed a shank button at the bend, placed that end in the Twist and Style tool, cranked it a few times, and got this perfect stem.

For the flower petals, I used Eileen Hull’s Sizzix Flower/Romance die and her Flower Layers with Heart Petals die. I decided to make the flowers out of fabric so they would be soft and durable for Fosse. For each flower, I die cut four of every layer.

Then I threaded the stem through the middle hole in the layers.

So the flowers would be dimensional rather than flat, I put glue between each layer and scrunched. I used Aleene’s Always Ready Original Tacky Glue. It’s called “Always Ready” because it comes in an inverted bottle with the tip at the bottom. Genius! It makes it so easy to use, and it’s that Aleene’s Tacky Glue we all love so much. (On a side note, I am so happy that packaging designers have discovered inverted bottles — mayonnaise, toothpaste, hair gel — life is so much easier when what you want to squeeze is already at the bottom.)

Attaching the finished flower to the loop was easy, as the wire of the stem wrapped around the loop very tightly. 

An optional step is to wrap floral tape around the wires. This secures it even more (which isn’t really necessary), but mainly it covers the sharp ends of the wires so they don’t poke at Fosse.

This is how it looked when it was done.

And this is how Fosse looks wearing it. She is a pretty lady!

Please, someone, ask Fosse to be in your wedding. (Although I can’t guarantee you she will be that well-behaved walking down the aisle.)

Disclosure: I have not been monetarily compensated for this post, though I received product from Sizzix to try it out. All opinions are my own. And Fosse’s.