Because it was a CRAZY 80 degrees today in Southern California, I felt the need to get into the summer spirit!! When January gives you 80 degrees, you dye paper flowers and make floral headpieces, obviously :) I started off with my materials...

I wanted to make a headpiece using elastic, but then had a headband base that I thought I'd use as well! This project would also work wonders, turning the flowers into pins with adhesive pin backs too if you'd like to go that route. The final piece of this sunny day DIY are paper flowers, these coming from Prima Marketing.

I sorted through an assortment of shaded of Rit Dye...

...and got to spritzing!

With these paper flowers, there's no need to wet them before dyeing. Just point and shoot!

To set the colors, just toss the flowers in the microwave. I nuked each flower individually for about 10 seconds, but feel free to combine flowers and put them in for a longer period of time (20/30 seconds). Just make sure you don't put in any flowers with metal attachments - this would be the case for the smaller flowers and the leaves - just let them dry on their own.

...and then they're ready for affixing! How pretty did they turn out?

Because these guys are paper, hot glue would make a perfect adhesive to affix them to your elastic/headband! (HG is a quick dry method as well, making it a perfect adhesive if you're working with kids.) I opted to go the E6000 route because I had some time to let everything dry and it was out already from working on another project. Dontcha love the reasoning??

After affixing flowers to my headpiece, I chose one larger flower and leaf for the headband.

I let my hair accessories dry and then put them on for a little fashion show!!

I paired my headgear with a vintage floral dress (it's got blue, yellow, and pink embroidered flowers!!!), a pair of shades that I found at Forever 21, and my shiny golden Steve Madden heels.