The one thing I love the most about making flower dolls is doing their hair. Doing my own hair has always been a struggle, it won't hold a curl, and I'm to impatient to grow it out again. However, working with flower dolls I've found I can express my hair stylist dreams, ha ha. There are plenty of YouTubers, Emily Lefler comes to mind, that demonstrate how to curl embroidery floss. I've found you can obtain a variation of curls simply by wrapping the floss around different sized dowels and even wire.
Some curls are too large to stand on their own, like victory curls or rolled curls, and I've found that clear plastic tubes can come in handy. Depending on the size of curls you are looking to obtain, clear straws work well or the clear tubes that protect paint brushes when you first buy them. So I am always saving things like that because I never know when I might use it.
Most of the people I've seen making flower dolls use hot glue for the hair, which is my main glue. In some cases I've found Crafter's Pick to be a better option for more detailed work, like securing the ends of braids or when I wrap Maleficent's head piece. It gives me more time to work with a piece and it dries clear, so I always have it in stock. You want to make sure you really close your bottle good though, it can dry out easily if you're not careful. I also like to use a paint brush to apply or disposable applicators which come in a variety of sizes but I like the blue 2.5 mm ones.
To get very kinky hair I wrap embroidery floss around my 22 gauge white cloth floral wire. I get mine at Hobby Lobby in the floral section but you can find it on here. The nice thing about using the wire is that 1. I can bend it in half to fit in my toaster oven and 2. I will eventually use it to make a doll. So I wrap my floss around the wire and then run them under water and place them on a pan in the oven at 175° Fahrenheit for 60 mins. Once they've cooled I unwrap them from the wire and I have curly kinky hair.
You can also change the look of your curls by how many strands your wrap at a time. So when I say strand I mean 1 piece of embroidery floss, not the individual strands that make it up. So I cut my skein down to equal lengths that are more manageable and wrap 3 to 4 strands side by side, this is on a small dowel by the way. You can use craft dowels from Walmart, the Dollar Tree, even bamboo skewers. Anyways, if I wrap a single strand at a time it is too tight of a curl in my opinion but may look closer to a natural curl. On the flip side 3 to 4 strand wrapped curls look more like what you would get if you were curling your hair with a curling iron. I use 1/4 inch dowels and 1/8 inch dowels but I like to use my coupons at Hobby Lobby or get them at the Dollar Tree. Again, bamboo skewers are good too just make sure to cut the ends off so you don't scratch yourself when you're wrapping them.
If you have any concerns about your dowels getting too hot in the oven you can soak them in water first. I always run water over all of mine when i'm finished wrapping them with the embroidery floss. Even if you soak the floss and dowel and hour is more than enough for them to get dry in the oven and set. Everything I've recommended is linked, in the post above, and I don't recommend anything I don't actually use. I highly suggest using coupons when you can and I'm a big fan of the clearance isle. I'll do my best to answer any questions you have. Thanks!
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Dine blomster dukker er meget smukke og fantastiske.
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