rapunzel, rapunzel, please hold my barrettes

crafting again!   love it.   my tomboy princess has a birthday party tomorrow and i really hate buying presents for kids i don't know.   i never know what to get, what they like, and i can't spend much.   

i asked a few questions and evidently this friend wears a lot of barrettes and plastic headbands.   ok, i can work with that.   my mom made some barrette holders that looked like a face with a yarn hair to clip your stuff to.   she made some with a face and some with a mirror where the face goes, which was cute.   that is what we intended to do.   round piece of wood for the face, paint it, and braid some yarn for hair.  

 i kept wondering how to make something she could put her headbands in too though.   we found this basket at the second hand / dollar type store.   i still figured on putting a round piece of wood on it for a face.   as we are driving down the road though, (on our way to our other favorite store, craft store), it hits me. . . rapunzel in a tower!    i'm a genius, with some divine inspiration, of course.  ( i blame heaven for all of my genius ideas.)

i'm thinking wood bead head at the craft store.   (craft stores are comparatively rare here in germany by the way, a killer for someone like me)   then we found these cute little foam heads for the same price.   normally, i would have gone with the wood and painted it myself, but . . .time seemed more important than my freakish desire to paint a face on wood.   

get moving now - paint the basket with a dark brown / gray for the background of the castle wall.   get it deep in the weave because your going to cover the front of the weave.    hang it on the clothes line to dry.   

braid, braid, braid, braid, braid. . . .my daughter and i braided nine hair pieces.   i measured my arm to nose yard with 2 pieces of yarn, three times for each braid.   my towering teen held two braids at a time while the princess and i braided, and braided, and  . . .yeah, that.   the teen tower fell asleep holding braids.   i made two much longer, and two more middle length for the center of the head.

paint a lighter gray / brown on the outside weaves of the basket.   hang it on the  clothes line to dry.

still braiding.

dab small light gray brown with a sponge in checkerboard pattern for bricks on the castle wall.   hang to dry.   good thing it wasn't raining today.

done braiding!   whooo-hooo!   
i used 2 skewers for the neck / body.   now, gluing hair on.   i liked strands folded and running front back better than across ear to ear.   yeah for hot glue!   i didn't even burn myself!   i've just cursed myself for the next time, dang!

i used a bit of wire and beads for the arms and hands.   i thought i took a picture of the dress, oops.   i used a small piece of fabric that was already sewn around the outside.   i have no idea what it was originally for.   it was just a square, folded it over the top of the "neck" and arms enough to cover down to where the castle wall would hit.   then i just glued and shoved the head on over the top of the fabric.    it left a good piece down the back inside the castle, which i just tacked down.

 the skewers fit down through the top weave of the basket so that helped to stabilize it a bit, that, and lots of HOT GLUE!   wheeeeee!   i used a piece of braid that i had left over to tie back the whole bunch into a pony, why i had an extra, i don't know.

after everything was dry and glued together, i decided that i wanted some flowers and ivy on my castle wall.   haul your hair out of the way girlie, i'm painting again!

here it is, rapunzel, rapunzel, let down your hair so i can clip on my hair thingeys.  (technical term)