Friday, March 23, 2012

Ayame Kanzashi Set

I finally finished the second set of kanzashi that I was working on!  I was making this set for my wonderful photographer, who is always up for a spur of the moment shoot and has the amazing ability to make me look fantastic.
This set is ayame, or iris flowers. They are traditionally worn in the month of May, and are an alternative to the more commonly seen wisteria kanzashi. I wanted to make something for her that was unusual without being bizarre, and when she requested purples, this was the first thing that struck me. I think they turned out rather well!


3 comments:

  1. Hi Megan! You have done such a spectacular job, I cannot believe you did this all on your own without the years and years of history and methodology Japanese kanzashi-makers use to intimidate one.
    I normally never comment on anything - EVER (I had to make an account just now!!); however your beautiful work has made my fingers frantically jump to my keyboard!

    I have been inspired by you to make some lovely kanzashi of my own (hopefully) and I have a question that I can't figure out for the life of me. How did you make those gorgeous petal falls? How did you attach them?

    Thank you so much for taking your time to read my groveling comments and then hopefully replying!! You're awesome =)

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    Replies
    1. Thank you for such a kind comment! The falls are the both difficult part for me, they take almost as much time as the rest of the set combined. o.o I'm going to put up a tutorial eventually, since this is the part that most people have trouble with, but in the interim, here is basically what I do -

      -take a long piece of wire. Fold it in half without creasing the middle, leave this open as a loop. Then twist the tails back around each other to create the stem. It's a little hard to explain without a pic, but it's basically the same as this - http://fc00.deviantart.net/fs5/i/2006/348/f/1/Kanzashi_Tutorial___Part_5_by_Kurokami_Kanzashi.jpg

      -make as many of those looped stems that you need for how many falls you want

      -to make the flower falls themselves, you take a long piece of cord and start gluing petals to it. I like to put them on so the fronts of the petals face outward, I think it looks better, but some people put them on there back to back. It's up to you what you like better.

      -finish off the bottom of each fall with a single petal to disguise the end of the cord

      -attach the cord to the stem by looping it through and gluing the end down to the back of the cord

      I hope that makes sense! I'll have a tutorial up for it in the near future (I usually make a new kanzashi set for spring, so I'll have the opportunity to do so before the end of April), which will hopefully make things easier to understand. Good luck with your project, and I would love to see the end results!

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    2. Thank you soooo much for responding so quickly! And your explanation totally makes sense! I really appreciate that you took the time to link me to a diagram as well =)

      Ooh! I can't wait to see your spring kanzashi! Meanwhile I need to get my butt to the craft store and raid their aisles and get some practice done!!! I feel much more confident now, and I'll be sure to link you a pic when it's done x3

      You're a serious inspiration and I'm so glad people like you exist! Never stop making beautiful things!

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