DIY Wedding Hair Flower – Carmen Rose

Capture the fragile beauty of a gorgeous, single rose by creating a stunning DIY wedding hair flower decoration. Once you’ve mastered the technique it can be used as a hair décor or even in an arrangement. The stunning hair decoration shown here is created using a single rose – the bloom is dismantled then reconstructed using thin wires. If you enjoy flower arranging, this is an extremely useful skill to master. The resulting beauty is known as a Carmen rose is a and once complete they can be used as stand-alone decorations for hair, as shown here, or as part of larger arrangements or even the bridal bouquet.

A Carmen Rose hair accessory is one of the best styles of creating a DIY wedding hair flower. The secret of producing a Carmen Rose is to select the variety of rose carefully, with a full rose with a good shape and large amount of petals required. Try to avoid using white roses as these bruise and damage easily.

You Will Need:

12 Large headed roses (Toscanini used in this example)
Silver Wire
Long stub wires & Gauge
Florist tape (green)

How to make the Carmen Rose DIY Wedding Hair Flower:

1. When making a DIY wedding hair flower, always choose the most perfect rose, remove sepals, cut the stem straight and leave 1.5cm (½”) of stem. Push the stub wire, in a gauge, up the stem into the bottom of the seed box of the flower. Cross the main wire with a silver wire to stop the rose from spinning. Tape the stem several times to give a solid base for the rose petals.

2. Remove the rose petals from the roses and grade them in sizes for ease of use. Take care not to bruise them and handle them gently during the construction process.

3. Make long hairpins with silver wire. These should be long enough to go through the petals and into the seed box of the rose. Take two petals, one smaller than the other, pin these firmly in towards the base of the rose. Keep adding petals in pairs, making sure the head is a good shape and all the hairpins are concealed.

4. To wire the remaining rose petals, take two petals and make a pleat in the centre at the base of the petals. With silver wire, secure in such a way to hold the pleat together.

5. Lay the wired petals flat on the outside of the rose. Work around the rose to make an even shape, spiralling the wires around the central stem. Also hairpin the petals neatly together if necessary to keep in place. Unlike store-brought alternatives, your diy wedding hair flower will not be machine glued so be extra careful.

6. Once the rose is the size required and is an even shape, cover the back of the bloom with rose leaves to cover the mechanics. Wire each leaf individually then make a neat rose leaf circle. Tape the stem firmly and neatly. Spray the finished Carmen rose with water and place in a cool area covered with polythene until needed.

Check out more ideas for DIY wedding hair accessories on our Pinterest board.