felt crowns

Have y'all heard of the organization Royal Family Kids Camps?  They put on week long camps around the US for foster kids that have been abused, neglected or abandoned... Read the testimonials if you have a minute.  What a terrific opportunity to care for kids that have had a rough go!

Anyhow, some friends and I are helping throw the birthday party for the Denver camp next week (most of the kids haven't had a birthday party before, so they throw one huge one for all of them during camp), and I thought I'd share some of my 'birthday party' crafting- a whole pile of felt crowns for the guests of honor!

I used the helpful birthday crown tutorial at Juicy Bits.  As I was making these, I was thinking about how great they'd be as birthday party favors.  A few tips for producing several of these?

1. Employ a hot glue gun!  I LOVE the gorgeous stitching on the crowns from the tutorial... not realistic here, though.  So my glue gun was my best friend in adhering embellishments.

2. Make an assembly line.  If I've learned anything from sewing for my nieces, it's that progressing stage by stage (instead of complete product by complete product) saves all sorts of time.  For the crowns, I cut out all of the pieces for all of the crowns, made all of the embellishments, sewed all of the elastic encasements and then put the crowns together.

3. Standardize. One style for the boys crowns, one style for the girls- and repeat.

4. Five words: pre-made felt chandeliers from Michaels.  Don't they make the girls' crowns super diva-esque?  If only I'd found something similarly fabulous (and pre-made) for the boys' crowns.

Happy crown making, friends!  Ooooh, and wait till you see what I made with the felt scraps... ;)