About The Headdress Workshop
The Headdress Workshop @ Mannequin Madness is our version of a “paint and sip” class.
Your design tools are a glue gun and a rubber mannequin head instead of a paint brush and a cloth canvas.
You make art to wear on your head rather than art that hangs on your wall.
You have the freedom to design whatever style headdress you want for whatever occasion. Perhaps you want a headdress to wear in a parade, cosplay event or cultural heritage activity. Or a flower crown to wear to a wedding, graduation cap, Burning Man or just because you want to wear flowers in your hair.
We provide you with realistic looking faux flowers - in a variety of colors, textures and shapes. And we have rhinestones, shells, butterflies, feathers and other gorgeous embellishments. All of our materials are sustainable, so your headdress will be something you can wear for one and over again.
Everyone leaves our class with a smile on their face and grateful for a time to unplug from their devices and express their creativity. Even people who don’t think they are creative, end up making something so fabulous, much to their amazement.
Our classes are held in the showroom of Mannequin Madness, a venue so unique it was featured in the travel book “Secret California, the weird, wonderful and obscure.” We end each class with a photo shoot in our photo studio that we email to all attendees.
The Headdress Workshop was created as a happy accident. The founder is Judi Henderson, the owner of Mannequin Madness, a mannequin recycling company in Oakland, Ca.
Back in 2019 Mannequin Madness was recycling mannequins for Macy’s and the retailer asked if they could also take the cartons of faux flowers they had used for their window display at the annual Macy’s flower show. Judi had no idea what to do with the flowers, but they were so beautiful she could not bear to see them thrown away, so she said yes.
A few weeks after she received over 100 used mannequin heads from a cosmetology school. One of her staff members suggested they attach the flowers from Macy’s on the mannequin heads and use as decoration for their warehouse. This idea was such a hit customers started asking to buy the headdresses, not realizing they were glued to the heads!
Judi is a big fan of the book, "The Artist Way" by Julia Cameron, and thought a headdress class would be an ideal “artist date.”