The Olympics start on Friday, and I’m so excited! My tutorials for the next few weeks will all be Olympics-themed in honor of the occasion. The tutorial today is probably one of my favorites of this year so far. It’s cute, came together really nicely and looks expensive for a craft project. I love it!

Supplies

Bronze metal/jewelry clay

Old baking sheet

X-acto knife

Bronze acrylic paint

Headband

Super glue (~2 tubes)

Directions

Separate your metal clay into a bunch of evenly-sized pieces. Mine came in balls, which I cut into eight even pieces each. Then mold them into a leaf shape. I sketched a template to help ensure each of my leaves were similar.

The hard thing I found about using metal clay was how easily it crumbled if I wasn’t careful. Something to keep in mind while you work.

Once you’ve crafted about 2 dozen leaves, bake them according to the clay’s package directions. The clay I used needed to be baked for 30 minutes at 266 degrees F.

When metal clay is baked, it becomes hard and metal-like, which is fascinating. Here’s what mine looked as they cooled:

A couple caveats about working with metal clay are that, like I said, it can crumble. Also, toxic fumes can result during the baking process. Because of this, I made sure to use an old baking sheet I don’t intend to use for baking again.

Next, score your headband with an x-acto knife to give something for the glue you’re about to use to stick to. Begin super gluing your cooled leaves to the headband in a laurel vine-esque pattern. This takes a while and is rather messy. I used my craft-exclusive baking sheet to protect my work table in this step.

When my super glue dried, it made my leaves look kinda ashy, which was a huge bummer. Between that and the fact that my headband base was black, I wasn’t satisfied with how it looked. Luckily, there’s acrylic craft paint!

Paint over the whole headband with as many coats as it takes to look good. Let it dry completely, and you’ve got yourself a totally cute headband.