Halloween costume element

I was asked by a friend to help her with her costume. She was to be Mrs. Universe...as in the universe, not a beauty contestant. She had clothes with images of the cosmos: stars, nebulae. She had items with a math theme and other themes, because the universe encompasses everything.
The thing she asked my help with was a head piece. She wanted the atomic symbol in metal to attach to a headband.


The atomic symbol shows three elipses, representing electron paths around a circle representing the nucleus of the atom. Like this (not that atoms really look like this):

Sure. I can help with that...maybe.
I had some 12 gauge aluminum wire. Soft enough to bend into shape, but strong enough to hold its shape for this purpose. It was also a good visual thickness for the size symbol we were making.

We printed out the symbol in the size she wanted. H (my friend) then was able to shape loops of the aluminum to fit to the loops in the image. I didn't take many pictures of the process, but here are the loops sitting on the image.

The image at the top doesn't have electrons on the elipses, but some images do show them, so we decided to add beads for the electrons.

I didn't have a good option for gluing metal today, so we used hot glue. It would have been better to use a soldering iron, but I didn't have any solder to use and wasn't sure if aluminum could be soldered or if it melts too easily. That's something I don't know much about, so I should research it.  I also thought, after we were finished, that I could have attached the rings together with a finer gauge wire. H correctly pointed out that that might be more difficult to keep them aligned right.

The beads we used are ones I've had laying around. I think I bought them from someone who was downsizing and bought them in a batch with other kinds of beads. They have relatively large holes, so they were good for this project. H thought they looked cool, so we went with it.
Here's a picture of what I sent H home with. The disk in the center is for stamping, but it was the right size for the nucleus. It would have been cool to have another large bead or something fancier for the nucleus, but we were working with limited time.

I didn't get a great picture before sending it off. The shadows make this a bit confusing, but H said she'd get me a picture of it on the headband.