I’ve grown to be a frugal shopper, and whenever I’m out, clearance stickers always catch my eye. I usually pause to at least glance and see what the item is and how much it is discounted. My husband avoids going to craft stores with me because I’m known to get distracted for hours while there.
Usually this habit ends up with me just walking away from the item after admiring the sale price. One day while in Jo-Ann Fabrics I happened upon two remaining packages of 7″ hat pins (3 count each package). I had no idea that hat pins existed, what they were doing in a beading section, nor how large of a hat you would need to make use of a 7″ hat pin.. but there they were, on clearance and marked all the way down to $0.97!
I’ve been trying to grow my hair out–it’s actually the longest it has been my entire life at this point. With that comes the inevitable playing with ponytails, pigtails and hair buns. So when I saw those hat pins my immediate though was that they would make terrific hair sticks.
For a person who has only glanced at hair sticks on Pinterest or in a store before, I’m probably not the prime candidate to teach someone a “how-to” in making them. In the end though, my sinister plan to convert hat pins into hair sticks paid off, and now I have a couple of new hair accessories!
Aside from the hat pins, I also used a mix of 6mm and 8mm Czech Fire Polish Beads that I purchased from Beadaholique. The bead mixes I used were called Ever Green and Heavy Metal. The feathers weren’t necessary, but I had some feather earrings I purchased from Claire’s early last year but never could find a reason to use. (When I bought the earrings in the store, it was three earring sets sold together for $10. I can’t find the same set online, so the link is to the closest I can find on their site.) I pulled the feathers off of their earring hooks and threw them onto the hat pin as well.
Supply List:
- Hat Pins ($0.97 on clearance, using two of the three in the package cost is $0.66; can be $3-$4 new in store for a package of six, so new cost is $1.30)
- 6mm Czech Fire Polish beads (~$4 per 50 beads; 38 are used (~76% of 50) so cost is $3)
- 8mm Czech Fire Polish beads (~$4 per 50 beads; 14 are used (~30% of 50) so cost is $1.20)
- [optional] Peacock and Black feather earrings ($10 for three pairs in store; two pairs are used so cost is $6.67)
- [optional] Clear Nail Polish (or some form of clear adhesive)
The Concordium of Cyliena 
