I made this crown so that my kids would have something fun to play with, since they often like to play princesses and queens and whatnot. I used a technique given to me by a costumer at Westercon to make brigandine armor. I’m sorry to say I forgot which costumer told me this, but I found other sites online that talked about a similar technique, so maybe it’s fairly common.
You start with funfoam. When I bought this, they only had one thickness, but if you can get the 3mm or thicker, it works a little better. I measured my head, then cut a piece of paper the same length as the circumference of my head. I folded it in half, then thirds, then half again and cut out a pattern so that when I opened it it was repeated like paper dolls. Then I laid it out on the fun foam.
One thing you may notice is that there are several breaks in the pattern. This is inevitable, as the funfoam was only 18″ long, and my head is 23″ in circumference. I tried to not let the breaks overlap so that it would be stronger. I added the secondary pattern, with the interspaced bumps, when I noticed that the first one wasn’t strong enough.
Once I’d attached both the primary and the secondary patterns, I glued a piece of thin cotton cloth. I do not recommend doing it in this order. Cutting the foam out with such deep lobes was hard enough the first time, and cutting it the second time (my scissors were dull, and I dared not use the good sewing scissors for this) made me want to rip my hair out in frustration. I couldn’t even use a razor blade very well. It’s very difficult to cut it when it’s in a circle like this. If you try this at home, do all of your cutting when it’s lying flat.
After I cut it, I used an embossing tool to indent lines for decoration. They’re kind of faint in the photo. Originally, the crown was much taller, but I found that it was too floppy. It’s still fairly tall, maybe six inches. I painted it with a mixture of water, white glue, and gold acrylic paint. Several thin coats would have been much better than four gloppy ones, but I didn’t have the paint ratios right. And let’s be honest, I didn’t want to spend too much time in something that was just for fun.
I used an eyelet setting tool to make faint circles all along the band at the bottom, and then I glued that on top of the crown. I also glued the diamond shapes in the center of the oak leaf shapes. It still needed more frou-frou, so then I used a hot glue gun to make the dots. I had to do this slowly so that the glue dots didn’t turn into glue ovals.
Once I’d done about as much painting as I was willing to do, I let it dry and then covered the whole thing with gold rub-n-buff. This is a waxy metallic coloring agent that has some kind of turpentine/oil base. The gold acrylic already made it kind of metallic, but the rub-n-buff sort of binds together and gives it a more even sheen. If I had a smoother original base, I’d imagine it would look even more metallic. Once that dried, I glued on the acrylic jewels and the centerpieces–two hideously gaudy buttons that cried out for this purpose.
I would recommend a similar project for any crafty person who has daughters (or sons!) who like to play. It’s a great prop for role-playing. Who doesn’t want to be royalty now and then?
