My Fair Lady Ballgown, Part VII: Tiara

 

For one of the accessories for this outfit I had to find an appropriate small tiara. It was actually harder than it sounds– while there are tiaras galore on eBay, most are much larger than the delicate piece Eliza Doolittle wears in her gigantic updo. The few smaller ones weren’t much better– they were usually too rounded and none had the tiny dangles you can see in the original. I finally came to the conclusion that I’d need to cobble one together myself. Luckily, after much searching I found this comb, which had the radiating tines decorated with rhinestones, even if it was in the wrong color. I removed the heart from the front and snipped off the extra tines so there were only seven, just like the movie version. I had to bend them into the correct position to make them look like they were radiating from a wider base, as well.

 

As there were no loops at the tips of the tines to attach my dangling teardrop rhinestones, I took silver wire and wrapped a single long piece up each tine, formed a loop, and then down each tine in the other direction before moving on to the next one. It had the added benefit of making the tines look more silver-colored, so while I’d intended to paint the whole thing silver at the end I ultimately decided that it was unnecessary.

I used small silver jump rings to attach teardrop rhinestones to each tine– the rhinestones were harvested from a necklace I found on eBay– it has five large (25 x 18mm), four medium (18x13mm), and eight small (13 x 9mm) teardrops, and only cost $4.19. Score! The teardrops are set in brass, not silver-toned metal, but it’s not a huge issue once the whole thing is put together.

Finally, I took a length of the thin silver wire and twisted it, doubling it over on itself three times, to form a thick cable of twisted wire about 4mm in width. I bent it into a curve, then hot-glued some rhinestone chain (left over from the rhinestone choker I modified for the outfit) onto it. I wired the resulting piece to the base of the tiara, and I was done!

Not perfect, I admit– it’s maybe a tiny bit larger than the original, the flowers at the tips of the tines are a little juvenile-looking, and I may have to bend the tines outward a bit more to get just the right shape, but it’s good enough for now.

 

Advertisement