How to make good Rabbit Ears: Alice in Wonderland photoshoot styling

You may think my title a bit arrogant, but I can't tell you how many hideous rabbit masks I have come across styling this shoot. So creepy. I ended up making this just in case...!

It's a useful one to know as it's so adaptable and I have been surprised at the number of times I have required animal ears of some sort in recent years.

You will need:

• 1/4m luxury white faux fur (good quality stuff is SO much better to work with and looks more realistic.)
• 1/4m pale pink felt
• florist's wire
• sharpie
• dressmaking scissors
• pattern paper (or a piece of paper large enough to make a template
• needle and white thread
• all purpose glue

How to do it:

1. Fold a piece of pattern paper in half and draw your ear shape on it. Cut out and you will have two mirror image templates for your ears.
2. Place your fur right side down, place each template on the fur and draw around.
3. Cut out the fur leaving a 1.5 cm seam allowance all the way round.
4. Shape your wire to follow the line of the template, leave the ends protruding out of the bottom. sew this wire in place all around the template line. 
5. Use your paper templates again to make inner ears out of the pink felt. Make sure you get two mirror image ears again. Draw around with the sharpie and cut out.
6.  Glue your piece of felt on top of the wrong side of the fur. It will cover the wire. 
7. Start to roll the fur in around the edges sewing a slip stitch as you go. Continue this all the way around on both ears.
8. I fixed the ears to an old boater. I cut two 'mouse hole' shapes in the boater, fed the ears in and glued wherever I could. To make sure the ears aren't uncomfortable on the inside of the boater, keep the inner band intact. I also wrapped a new ribbon around the hat to help keep the ears in place.
9. With wire in the ears you can bend them into any shape you want!

How to make beautiful Hair bows: Alice in Wonderland Photoshoot styling: Behind the scenes

Another make from the Alice in Wonderland photoshoot Vault. 

There were some lovely bows, here are a few more we made for Alice, just in case!

When styling outfits for shoots you always need 2nd, 3rd, maybe 4th choice options for the outfits. I think this goes for the accessories, surely they are affected by which outfit is chosen. Therefore I took great pleasure in having a play around with some Alice bows that could be quickly fixed to a hairband on location or pinned into the model's hair.

You will need:

• assortment of ribbon, you don't need more than 1/4 m for any of these.
• needle and matching thread.
• pinking shears

1. Choose the ribbon for the main body of the bow. I went for a pale blue 1 inch thick and then layered it up with a thinner textured/patterned grosgrain ribbon.
2. Cut 25cm length of each with pinking shears to stop ends fraying. Both right sides up, place one on top of the other, matching up the ends.
3. Fold the ends around the back and into the centre (make sure there is a little bit of overlap) and press a concertina fold in the centre.
4. Secure in place with needle and thread. Don't cut the thread, keep the needle in play. now take a 1cm black ribbon to wrap around the centre of the bow. Place it at the back of the bow and sew in place with a few stitches. Now wrap it around the bow centre at least 2 times. 
5. With the needle and thread still attached, secure this central ribbon with a few more stitches. Cut off the ribbon end with pinking shears. Cut the thread.
6. These bows can easily be sewn onto padded fabric 'alice bands' or you can slip a clip or pin through the back black ribbon loop to wear the bow as a hair slide.

More Alice in Wonderland Photoshoot DIY makes

I'm pretty chuffed with these Queen of Heart Cupcakes, as I am in the small minority of people who are not avid bakers, and certainly not keen cupcake decorators. I also didn't have a heart cut out so these were all cut free hand. The cupcakes graced the mad hatters tea party table. 

We also had an option for some oversized tissue flowers floating around in the background. The internet is awash with tissue paper flower DIY projects. Here is how I did mine: 

I first chose my palette, this is Wonderland so I was afforded a bit of artistic licence. Pale peach and deep blue seem to create a pleasing contrast. 

I cut out my petals: the joy of tissue paper is that you can cut out numerous pieces in one go, so I took a folded wedge of tissue paper in each colour and cut out roughly 12 petals in three increasing sizes.

You must forgive me for less than beautiful photography. These were very much taken in the heat of making, often with my wrong hand free!

I took half of the smallest petal size, and pleated the narrower ends in my hand, bunching up a bouquet of petals and creating a stem stump which i wrapped with some sellotape. This stem is very important to keep pronounced throughout adding petals as it helps centre the flower and will also be a useful protruding piece to attach a real stem to later on.

Turn it over and you will see you have the start of a flower forming.

Turn the flower back over so it's wrong side is facing you. Take the remaining smallest size petals and do another layer of adding, keeping the stem pronounced. Always add petals from behind and always start with the smallest size.

This second layer is to ensure you have an even distribution of petals, so keep looking at it from the front to see where new petals need to go.

Before you add the next size up of petal, my advice is to spiral a bit of glue around the centre back of the flowers, this helps the flower stay together and keep that cupped petal shape as you add more and more petals.

Once you are out of the smallest size, move on to the next size up. Repeat the initial petal adding steps.

Looking at it from the front you will see a beautiful (and in my case, a bit bonkers) flower forming.

Keep that stem stump pronounced!

Once you have added all the petal layers, add a few pieces of tape to the back of the final layer to keep the back petals from flopping backwards.

These look pretty beautiful in their abstraction. If you want to go a bit further in creating a more flower like bloom you can do the following:

Next steps: I added scrunched up fine strips of a bright orange tissue paper to the centre, just by putting a blob of glue to the centre and pressing a bundle of the scrunched up tissue in.

I got some dowel from a local builders yard (also available at craft shops but often a lot more expensive), fitted a foam board base and sprayed it a bright and strange turquoise green colour. To attached the flower to the stem, I made sure the flower stem stump was pronounced enough and took two thin strips of gaff tape and wound them round both the stem and the flower stump.

To weight the foam board base, I simply sprayed a large pebble the same colour as the base and placed it on the base.

Alice in Wonderland shoot DIY makes: Bow

There seem to be bows a plenty in Alice in Wonderland. It may have something to do with it's edwardian origins; ruffles and bows on everything possible. 

For this shoot, I am styling four characters with a playful nod to the images and icons from the stories, but not going too literal or 'costumey'.

Timing is everything, and this Christmas I managed to obtain not one, not two, but THREE miniature packs of playing card from the inside of numerous pulled crackers.

They are a fantastic resource as their diminuitive scale allows you to do some really delicate work. This fan of cards is the beginnings of a hair accessory for the Queen of Hearts.


Bow Tie

You will need:

• miniature playing cards
• all purpose glue
• scissors
• sellotape
• 3/4 m black ribbon 1 cm width.

I took four cards, two for each side of the bow tie and concertina folded them. I overlapped the inner edges on each side to give it a bit of structure.

 

I fixed it with glue and some tape on the back edge. I then took one more card and concertina folded it to match the central folds and placed it on top of the centre of the bow tie and glued in place.

 

I wrapped black ribbon around the middle and strung another piece of black ribbon inside this loop to make a neck tie for the bow tie. This one ties at the back and is hidden under the collar. I am sure if you wanted a more permanent playing card bow tie you could fix a proper bow tie fastening, but this works perfectly for this shoot!