Headband or tiara?

I think I mentioned it before, when I was a child, we had those plastic disks in several colors which reminded of flowers and which you could connect to each other and build all kinds of things. The most easiest thing to make was a tiara because the different colors were different gems for us.

When I found a metal headband blank in my stash, I didn't think of that, though. I thought of bead embroidery because I had just found another dichroic glass cab. It was a dark blue with green and I had all those bugles in ocean colors lying around and seed beads to go with them and I could add pearls (coins and Biwa) and crystals, oh and those two opalite cabs, too!
Once I had a few bugles on there, however, I didn't like the stripey look together with the rounded shapes of the cabs and beads, so I ripped all of them back out and picked different seed beads instead.

Embroidering took its time, but like bead looming it has a meditative effect on me, so that was okay.
Lately I have been trying to get away from strict symmetry, so this piece isn't symmetrical either as you can tell if you look closely.

Now came the hard part. How to get this piece onto the metal blank? I had a vague idea, but I wasn't sure. The ending of this video tutorial by Lidia Sapronova helped me confirm what I had to do.
First I glued a piece of thicker paper to the bead embroidery strip to strengthen it as the blank itself is very slim. Then I took my ultrasuede, measured and cut two little slits, one on each side a few centimeters from the edge through which I put the ends of the blank. Now I could glue the ultrasuede to the blank which sounds much easier than it was for someone who is as glue challenged as me and then the bead embroidery to the blank and ultrasuede which resulted in some minor cursing.
I just wasn't sure if the glue could really hold all of this together, so when it had dried, I decided that for safety I'd sew all those layers together not just at the edges, but also along the edges of the blank, so that it wouldn't be able to move around in there. Somehow I hadn't expected it to take so long, but I'm still glad I did it.
The last step was of course the edging for which I chose pearly white seed beads to enhance the ocean feeling, sea foam and all that, you know.

There are examples in which both the embroidery and the ultrasuede go all around the metal blank. In my case that means there would have been hair over it and would definitely get tangled in it, so I didn't chose that variation. Also I would have had to add a piece of ultrasuede as the pieces I have wouldn't have been long enough.
In other pieces in there was an extra piece of ultrasuede all around the metal ends, but I admit that I didn't think myself capable of sewing that on and make it look good, too. Don't forget, this was my first attempt at something like this in the first place.

There's no doubt about it, this is no lightweight.
That's not my personal problem with it, however. I have never been that good with those kinds of headbands because I don't like the feeling behind my ears. Also with my straight hair they always slipped down when I looked down. A friend said I should try to attach some combs. I'll have to look into that, but actually I think it looks much better worn as a tiara ...
I deserve a tiara, don't I? And funnily enough worn like that it doesn't slip down even if I curtsy before Mylady Gundel ;-) Seriously, I can look down and it will still stay in my hair.
Now my wardrobe is not exactly very regal, but we'll see. It was another challenge and I did it and am proud of it.

So this is what the finished tiara is looking like from all sides and worn by my model Jacqueline.