Swizzle Stick Flower Crown

I’ve wanted my own swizzle stick flower crown for years now, but 1. I couldn’t justify the expense of buying one and 2. I didn’t know how to make one myself. Fast forward many years later and I found tutorials on YouTube on how to make headdresses that are similar to a flower crown.

Every year at the Lake, we receive many Ohana swizzle sticks and many from previous years too. I wanted to use one of each of the swizzle sticks that I’ve received into the crown. They come in an assortment of colors, so the hard part would be to tie all the colors together into a cohesive piece. I decided to go with purple and orange as the two main colors of the crown.

I used a headband as the base. I needed an armature to hold up the swizzle sticks. Found some heavy foam and sprayed it a dark camouflage green. After arranging the sticks in a pleasing pattern, I cut them and hot glued them to the foam and headband. I also glued colored crystals to the tikis’ eyes.

Then I wove a battery operated string of LED lights through the swizzle sticks. I arranged the battery pack/controller to the back and glued a piece of Velcro to the back so the batteries could be replaced in the future.

I hand painted details on some of the flowers to add depth and interest. I tried the crown on different points of completion to try the balance and added three combs to the top and sides for stability.