Day of the Dead Flower Headpiece Tutorial

Make a Day of the Dead headpiece with just a few simple, easy to find craft materials.  This Day of the Dead headpiece with veil requires no sewing--just a glue gun.

Have you ever seen a Day of the Dead celebration?  They have some amazing Dia de los Muertos celebrations here in the Phoenix area, and I'm absolutely in love with colors, the flowers, the festivity, and the beautiful sentiment behind the celebration.  

We're in Cornwall this week, the Celtic nation in the southwest section of England, attending the Lowender Peran festival.  This is our third trip to the festival, and the Saturday night ceili is always a fancy dress party (aka costume party, to those in the states), and the theme this year is Spooky.  Day of the Dead costumes seemed perfect for our group (there's a good chance we'll be the only Americans there once again).  Southwestern US representing in the southwestern UK! 

UPDATE:  Here are some pictures of us at the festival on Fancy Dress Night!  Niamh thought she should be very somber for this photo.

The face painting is actually made astoundingly simple by using temporary tattoos!  You can buy them here.  You do still need some black face paint for the eye sockets, but all the fancy detail work goes on so quickly and easily.

Another benefit of the temporary tattoos?  They don't come off if you're all sweaty from dancing the night away like I was.

How to Make Day of the Dead Flower Headpiece with Veil:

Pair these headpieces with some Day of the Dead temporary face tattoos, some skeleton tights, and a black dress for the perfect easy Day of the Dead costume.

Materials for Day of the Dead Headpiece

• plain wide headband
• black felt
• silk flowers
• black lace
• ribbon
• low temperature glue gun

I had some plastic headbands left over from making some Irish dancing headpieces last year, and thought they'd make the perfect base for my floral headdress.

I didn't want the bright white plastic showing up against my dark hair, so I covered the headbands in felt, just using hot glue.  I did this one in purple, to compliment the flowers I was using, but the rest I covered in black felt, and I think I like that a little bit better.

There's another benefit to covering the headbands in felt (or another fabric): the glue gun will attach the black lace for the veil and the silk flowers far better to a fabric-covered headband than a plain plastic headband.

Making a Veil for a Day of the Dead Headpiece

No need to cut any special shapes like when you make a wedding veil.  For this project, I simply cut a rectangle of black lace for the veil, and used a hot glue gun to glue it, gathered along the top edge, to my felt covered headband.  

Let me just say here that it's a VERY good thing that I only use low temperature glue guns, because I glued the heck out of my fingers trying to attach the veil.  The glue goes right through all those holes in the lace.

Once the lace veil was attached, it was time to glue on the flowers.  The hot glue gun really didn't like to stick to the green plastic bits at the bottom of the flowers, so I had to remove them all when gluing the flowers to the headband.  

Cluster the silk flowers tightly together and glue to the headband to create a lush, thick band of flowers.

Not feeling crafty?  You can buy a beautiful, similar Day of the Dead headpiece here.

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