Floral Crown for Swedish Midsummer (or just because you want to)

With the rain falling, LBG and I resorted to DVD entertainment today. A few moments later, she declared that she absolutely needed to have a flower-crown like the princess on the television. By coincidence I had, the night before, been figuring out a craft that we could make to go alongside our Swedish Visiting Cake on the Swedish leg of Around the World in 12 Dishes. Though we came to the idea from different starting points, I’m delighted to learn that my daughter and I are sometimes on the same wavelength!

The Swedish, it transpires, go in for midsummer in a fairly big way. This could be something to do with the amount of hours of sunlight that Scandinavian countries get during the summer months. They wear floral head-dresses and dance round maypoles. It sounds idyllic. So I thought we could make some sort of floral head-dress and cavort like flaxen-haired nymphs until it was time for tea. OK, she cavorted like a flaxen-haired nymph. I did ring-o-roses like a highly-assisted-blonde, middle-aged, tired-round-the-edges mother-of-two. But you get the idea. It was fun. And an easy craft.

You need pipecleaners-nice long ones, ideally. Weave a few together to create a coronet that sits nicely on the head of the recipient.

You will also need tissue paper. I scored 100 sheets for 99p in The Works today so am very happy. I used my giant circle punch to bash out three dozen circles in various colours (or shades-of-pink, as LBG prefers). You could just cut it into squares though.

Take two or three tissue paper circles, lay them on top of each other, then pinch together in the middle and twist to create a flower. Repeat until you have as many flowers as you need.

Stick these flowers to your coronet- I used Sticky Dots to avoid having wet glue soggying my tissue paper, and to avoid having to wait for glue to dry.

Cavort around your sitting room or any convenient May Pole.