by DIY Bride on Aug 12, 2015

After so many years of barn and farm weddings (which we still love), it warms our hearts to watch the rise of by-the-sea weddings this year. Seaside, beach, tropical, and nautical weddings are beginning to have their moment and we're thrilled to bring you some sea-themed projects for your DIY big day with our friends from Totally Dazzled that are on trend and won't kill your budget.

Today we're creating a gorgeous headband embellished with rhinestone starfish, the perfect accessory for your beachy tresses.

This is a ridiculously easy project - and one that packs a lot of "wow" factor. Easy and awesome? What's not to love, right?

What You'll Need:

• Flat metal headband, ours is from a dollar-type store.
• Jeweler's glue such as Dazzle Tac, E6000, or Aleene's Jewelry and Metal Glue
• Rhinestone sea stars from Totally Dazzled, various sizes*
• Wire cutters for clipping the backs of non-flat back embellishments
• Metal file or emery board for smoothing out burrs or edges from cutting embellishments
• Toothpick for spreading glue
• Newspaper for protecting your work table
• Paper towels for wiping excess glue

Directions:

Before you begin, please set up your work space in a well-ventilated area. E6000 and other epoxy/strong glues often release strong fumes. Nausea and dizziness and no fun. Be safe, friends!

1. Basically, you'll just glue the rhinestones sea stars onto the headband. HOW COULD THIS BE ANY EASIER!? Ah, but it's a little trickier than it sounds. The hardest part is arranging your beautiful little sea stars on the band; before you start gluing, play with placement a bit. You can do a full row from ear-to-ear or you can, like we've done here, arranged the stars in a cluster on one side of the band. It's a chic look and looks fab with just about any hair style long or short. To make this project easy, lay out your arrangement on a piece of paper before you glue so all you have to do is transfer from the paper to the band with no guesswork.

2. For this project, we used some rhinestone star fish that were not flat backs. They were pins or slides originally but a clip with a wire cutter transformed them into the beauties you see now. Use a metal file or an emery board to smooth out any rough edges from cutting.

3. The next hardest part (and it's really not all that hard) is applying the stars to the band. Add a dollop of glue to the back of a rhinestone star fish/sea star and press it onto the metal band. Hold it in place for 60 seconds or until the glue starts to get grippy. Move on to the next; we overlapped each of the sea stars just a bit to give a more refined and luxe finish.

As for arrangement, we did began with one of the small starfish at the midpoint of the headband, added a few large starfish, and went smaller as we progressed toward the end of the headband. We left the last 1″ of the band uncovered.

4. Repeat until you've covered the band to your liking. That's all there is to it!

For this project, I used the following Totally Dazzled products:

( 3 ) CRYSTAL STARFISH BROOCH 415-S $1.75

( 3 ) DIAMANTE STARFISH BUCKLE 313-S $0.98

( 3 ) STARFISH RHINESTONE FLAT BACK 545-S $0.97

To get more DIY projects, BE SURE TO SIGN UP FOR TOTALLY DAZZLED'S EMAIL LIST at http://www.totallydazzled.com/pages/newsletter or VISIT THEIR BEAUTIFUL BLOG at http://www.totallydazzled.com/blogs/totally-dazzled-blog for inspiration and awesomeness.