Ice Queen or Glinda, the Good Witch of the North?

My dear sister-in-law will soon be celebrating her 50th birthday and I wanted to make her a tiara to commemorate the occasion.

How I struggled to figure out how to make a base without knowing her head size.  I didn't want to guess and then have it not fit her.  That's when I resorted to using a pre-made tiara as the base for her crown.  (You can see the little rhinestones at the  very bottom in this picture).

I knew I wanted to build the crown up so it had some height.  To do so, I looked for chicken wire.  Do you know you have to buy and entire roll of that stuff?  You can't just buy a square foot--unless you're lucky enough to find someone who will sell you a scrap piece.  Fortunately, I found a 1 foot square piece in the scrapbooking section of a local floral craft supply store.  I was never so happy to see a scrap piece of chicken wire before in my life!

I toyed with how to anchor the chicken wire to the tiara.  When that was done, I had every intention of trimming it down into a crown-like shape.  On second thought, however, the height of the chicken wire was really appealing to me.  There were so many possibilities...

I think because the tiara already came with rhinestones, I was compelled to stick with that color scheme.  I pulled out all like-colored items to decorate the crown:  iridescent garland, crystal drops and picks, a silver glittered butterfly.  All of these items worked beautifully together and this is how it turned out!

It's a bit top-heavy as you can imagine, but my sister-in-law was absolutely tickled when I presented it to her.  She is now convinced I should start up a side-business making crowns and tiaras.