Bunny as you may recall if you’ve been ready this blog for a while, has loved My Little Pony for a loooong time and used to absolutely adore Rainbow Dash. She would dress up as Rainbow Dash for absolute hours, and insisted that she was actually her invisible friend. Then she turned 8 a few months ago, and around the same time became obsessed with reading. She will get stuck in a book and you just can’t talk to her because she can’t hear you anymore, she is in her own world. So i guess i shouldn’t have been surprised when she announced that Twilight Sparkle was her new favourity pony. It might be silly to pay so much attention to your child’s favourite pony, but her love of Rainbow Dash was always so telling of her personality, and this change really signalled to me a change in her perspective. She has taken turning 8 quite seriously, and I’ve noticed a real maturing in her too. I can see that this is a special age for her, and i’m trying my best to enjoy it with her and embrace the changes in her likes and dislikes without crying. Ok fine i cried hehe.

So when it came time for her birthday party she asked me for a My Little Pony craft party. I think she made it up by mashing together her two favourite things, crafting and Pony’s, because i had literally never heard of this party theme before. I’m actually going to do a seperate blog poast about how i managed to sort that out, because it took a couple of weeks of Pinteresting and prepping to make it happen, but it went really well. Anyway, she asked me to make her a Twilight Sparkle costume for her party – but not too much like a costume, because apparently she is “quite grown up now”. Her words. So cute hehe. I had a bit of a dilemma on how to achieve a costume that’s not a costume. Coincidently Bunny has a cat ear headband that she has worn to death and loves to don when she is being a cat (which is surprisingly more often than you’d think hehe), and that gave me the idea of making a Twilight Sparkle headband. Something she could wear as a birthday headpiece, but not make it a dress up event.

I turned to the amazing Toni at Stitch and Pink and her unbelievable My Little Pony costume tutorials. Please someone give this woman an award for her amazingness. I used her free pattern for a twilight sparkle horn and ears and then hand sewed them onto a self drafted soft headband with elastic at the back. Her tutorial uses a hoodie sweatshirt and hairclips for the ears, but i knew this wouldn’t work well for Bunny. At first i tried glueing them to a headband, but Bunny is pretty fussy about headbands and i just couldnt’ find one that would fit the hefty horn and ears, and was still comfy to her. Stretch headband for the win. As a side note, when i was part way through sewing the ears and horn I started to really question the scale. The ears looked huge and the horn small and i was worried, but pushed on. Let me say this, trust the pattern. The scale is perfect, and i wouldn’t change a thing. So if you use this pattern, just trust it, Toni has it right :).

This only took me a few hours to make, but I’m beyond thrilled with how it turned out. Bunny loves it so much, and it now holds the coveted position of  hanging on the post of her bed. It seemed to hit the perfect balance for her desire to be a little bit dressed up but not too much. Thank goodness.

Meanwhile, I can’t resist posting this little set of headshots – i started doing it for my kids a few years ago, as a way to document their different expressions at each age. I’ve loved it. It’s amazing to see how much they’ve changed and to compare their typical little looks. As a comparison point, here is Bunny at 5 when i started this, and woah the difference. Bunny took me aback this time, because she tried so so hard to be serious and not be her typical nutty self – i think perhaps that’s part of growing up – but still, I am her mum, and I know how to get the big honest to goodness REAL grin.