Hat: A Bit of the Meadow

This is my second hat attempt.  My creative juices were beginning to gain steam as I started to disassociate the little ready made hats with 'completeness'.  Looking at them more like broken watch parts to be assembled into something for my own designs helped me to determine how their shape and size could lend itself to something cute and whimsical. 

The hats are small, only about 5 inches tall.  There's a limited amount of pomp and circumstance you can toss on them before they become ridiculous and topple off your head in a burst of over-balanced glory.  Still, I wanted to try something more fantastical. 

YAY BUTTERFLIES!

I brought forth this little baby.  I bet you can't guess what the butterflies came from or what they're made of.  They're actually scrap-booking supplies.  Glittery, glacee butterflies to be exact.  For those of you who don't know, glacee is a weird semi-flexible polymer. They commonly use it to make synthetic leather. 

I was afraid that the glitter and rhinestones would fall off, so I gave the butterflies a liberal application of air-dry resin, followed by some clear nail lacquer.  Those are the only things I know that will protect a glittering object from shedding without dulling its sparkle.  Very important since these babies are attached to a hat and one expects them to be bobbling around on your head as you skip and sway at your fancy tea parties.

It's like you took a tiny piece of a faerie meadow and plopped it on a hat!

This hat was fun to make.  I set aside my internal filters and decided to just have fun with it.  In the end, the decorations that I thought would be 'too much' ended up being cute and tasteful when paired with small flowers and a simply black felt hat.  Take some design cues from that. 

I want to make something like this again- or perhaps, something much grander.  We'll see.