Odette-Odile headpieces

 Swan lake headpieces: Odette (Swan queen, white swan) and Odile (Black swan)
There are many different styles of headpieces for these two roles. Thanks to the movie  Black Swan,  the only style you can find via Google seems to be copies (both good, bad and ugly) of the ones seen in the movie.
Mine were inspired by Laura Cuthbertsons' Odette headpiece, as seen here:

 and Polina Seminova's Odile headpiece as seen here:

Both the Odette and the Odile headpieces were built on a milliner's wire frame.
I joke the my dear husband G (dhG) is my "hardware" guy and I am the "software" person, but most of the wire frames I use, are made by husband. He has also built the "jigs" (mold) around which the headpiece frames were shaped.
I began by drawing a picture on some graph paper, specifying how tall the headpiece was to be, what types of stones I was going to use, how many, what shape, size and color.
Next I wired up the individual stones onto silver colored wrapping wire. For Odette I made branches of glass pearls, crystal AB briolettes,  aquamarine and crystal argent teardrops, and crystal rose-montees.
For Odile, I made spikes of crystal argent teardrops, siam rounds, crystal AB  briolettes, black diamond AB, silver crystal cup-chain  and crystal rose-montees.

wiring up stones for Odile (black swan) crown

wired up stones, sewn onto lace for Odette (Swan queen) crown

Next the wire frames were shaped, soldered and sanded to remove any sharp edges.

machining off sharp edges on wire frame

preparing to solder wire crown frame

Completed wire frame for Odette crown

Complete wire frame for Odile crown

Odile (Black Swan) headpiece

Once the frames were ready, they were spray painted with silver metallic spray paint, and then wrapped in thin silver cording. The cording was tacked with special cotton milliners thread to some parts of the frame and secured with Fabritac (tm) glue.
After the frames were wrapped, the gems were added using fine gauge jewel wire.
For Odette, a feather headpiece was also made out of white hackle pads and horsehair (crin). The jeweled headpiece was then sewn to the feathered part.
To finish the Odile headpiece, a strip of heavy duty horsehair, dyed to match the dancer's hair was sewn to the frame.

Odette headpiece with feathers