The Silly Pearl {Handmade}: Craft Tutorial: DIY Ladybug and Bee Antenna

So after much debate and changing of minds, the girls decided to be a bee and ladybug this year. I set out to buy fabric to make skirts and ended up buying everything ready-made, except for their antenna. I kept them super simple.

Materials:

Felt (Bee: yellow, white and black; Ladybug: red and black)
Headband (mine were a pair from the dollar store)
1 pipe cleaner
3/8” ribbon (Bee: yellow and black; Ladybug: red and black)
Hot glue gun and scissors
Fabric pen (a permanent pen will work…just cut inside of the line).

Directions:

Take your ribbon and tie a knot around one end of the pipe cleaner. Wrap ribbon around the pipe cleaner so the pipe cleaner is covered. Tie a knot at the other end. Trim the ends of the ribbon.

Wrap the ribbon-covered pipe cleaner around the top of the headband, so you have two equal lengths sticking up.

Twist the two ends at the base i.e. on top of the headband, to secure.

Draw a rough sketch of your bug.

Cut out the bee’s main body in black (an egg-shape). Cut out another piece for the backing. Use the main body as a template for the yellow stripes.

Cut the wings in a sort of heart shape. Cut two sets of the main body, backing, stripes and wings. Glue the stripes to one of the main body pieces, and then the wings on top.

Sandwich the pipe cleaner in between the two main body pieces. Adhere with hot glue. Repeat with other set.

Finally, tie ribbon around the base.

To make ladybug antenna, do the same thing with a different shape. You’ll need two main body pieces, but one black and one red. Then with black felt, you’ll need 4 dots, one stripe down the middle, and the head. Make two sets, and repeat the steps above.

All done.

For the rest of their costumes, I found ready-made tutus (which I had planned on making, but my mom talked sense into me…thanks mom), plus wings, tights, and black shirts. I was able to find ladybug wings, but not bee wings. So I used white fairy/angel wings and reshaped them so they’d look more rounded like bee wings.Then I added a bee to the center with some ribbon streamers.