Hair Ornament

Those of you which have followed my blog before will know that I love "decorating" myself. I love jewelry, sequins and beads.
I am 50+ and my hair is getting pretty gray around the edges but that doesn't mean that I will resign to becoming drab and boring!
I used tot visit the website "going gray looking great" very often ( before they were only on facebook) and last time I read something about hairtinsel and how wonderfull silver tinsel looked in gray hair. So I had a look on google but was shocked to find 10 strands kost €5.00! I had some yarn which had silver wrapped around it so I spent a while unraveling some and knotted two strands in my hair. I was rather pleased with the result untill the next day when I brushed one strand out and two collegues thought they were helpfull when the pointed out to me there was "something"stuck in my hair!
So I had a good think about a decoration I could make that would look as if it was meant to be there.
I also like the "Jack Sparrow look" ( I'm talking about the hair, not the teeth) and that's when I got the idea to make this...

I looked in my stash for something I could use. I tend to hoard things that I think will be usefull in the future such as ribbons from presents and packaging and even christmas decorations. I also used some cross stitch yarn in the colour of my hair.

Then I got a piece of wire and a jump ring. I wanted to use wire as a base because I have curly hair and I thought it would look weird having a straight decoration in amongst my curls. With wire I could bend it any way I wanted so it would go with the flow of my hair. The Jump ring was so I could hang the decoration on a hairslide to secure it in my hair.

Then I cut all the strands to the length I wanted and attached them with very fine wire to the wire just under the jump ring.

After this I braided ( or if you're British platted) the strands and held them in place with a clothes peg.

Then I used a piece of the same thin wire to wrap around the strands a few times after which I slid a bead over the braid/plat. I hung an ornament on the two ends of wire I used in the base by bending the wire back after placing the ornament over it and wrapped the rest over the thin wire around it to tidy it up. Lastly I cut the ends of the strands all the same length.
When it was finished I ran to the mirror, eager to see how it looked....... I was very dissapointed. It looked really stupid! Though I'm convinced it would look really lovely on someone with thick, straight, long hair!
I haven't given up on the idea yet but I think I will make al shorter, less massive one for myself next time with no wire in it. That was a bad idea.
This one will make a good bookmarker! :-)