Ode to a Lady: Indeed

I have made another hat, this time a bit more grand.  It's a red hat, after all.  Red hats have to be dolled up and pampered.    I began by adding a bit of lace cording to the band of the hat.

I know you can see the fluff peeking out the back. 

Indeed.

I chose to expand on mother's idea of adding netting and tulle.  While I'm not a huge fan of the stuff, it does give a nice effect and looks quite flashy when you...pleat and trim it like so.  Rather than giving unstructured body, it gives body, shading, tone and drama to what would otherwise be a plain hat with some simple embellishments on it. 

As I was preparing to put the hat together, I decided that some feathers were a must.  A bright red hat with some netting isn't very stylish. 

Hat and Design element facing forward

I tried turning the hat in a variety of directions in order to get a feel for how versatile it is stylistically.  A hat with a fancy doodad is great, but I've seen too many of them in stores that you can only wear a certain way.  I wanted to make sure that it would look good no matter how I chose to rotate it. 

Embellishments on the side with the fringe of netting hanging over the face...

Embellishments facing the back of the head

I'd say I was successful.  I like the effect of the paper flowers and rhinestones against the bright red and black iridescence of the feathers. 

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. 

Miniature Top Hat: Keeping it simple

Now that you've seen my tutorial for making a fancy little hat fascinator (If you haven't, Here You Go), I felt that I needed to put my own instructions into action and give you a little snippet of what I've done with this handy, dandy bit of knowledge.  Be aware, there aren't many pictures of this first attempt because well, it's the first try.  The first try either blows all normal conventions out of the water or is a simplistic precursor to the fantastic.

I made this hat using the 'Purchase and Decorate' method and I'll be honest, it was hard to get it started.  I'm not sure if it's just me, but when I get something ready made, it takes my brain a moment to make the leap to Creativity Land.

Courtesy of Pacroid.blogspot.com

Setting a design is always the hardest part.  It's even harder when your brain forgets that this little hat is NOT complete and needs some pizzazz.  Mine chose the moment that I needed it to create things to go on a vacation, so I borrowed mom's.  Her brain was stuck on netting and tulle.  The fluffier the better.   

It's not fluffy enough.

I wasn't so sure about this idea, even after she regaled me with photos of fancy hats decked out in fluffy stuff.  As a rule, I only like fluffy skirts, kittens and cupcake frosting.  I became a little afraid when she declared, "More tulle!  MORE!  Use the whole roll!"  But I did as she suggested.  I pleated the tulle on one side to form little lumps that remind you of one of those 1940s hairstyles and tied it into a big fluffy bow in the back of the hat, secured it with a few drops of glue.

Like this but with less film star attached to it.

I needed to tulle it up.  The hat would have been pitiful without it.  After we tweaked and poked at the hat, we both determined that it still needed something...  I decided that it needed something shiny to balance all the matte textures.  The end result was this.

Big tulle bow worn in the front. 

Big tulle bow worn on the side

The good thing is that the tulle bow feature looks great.  The bad thing is that the rest of the hat looks a little plain by comparison.  In the near future, I may add more to it...I need to go craft shopping first. 

Hatter Madness: Tutorial 2

So, I'm sure you all remember the tutorial I did for Fascinators and hats not too long ago.  If you don't, here it is.  Well, I made that tutorial before I learned that there were other construction options available to those who don't want to devote a ton of time stitching, starching and wiring.  It seems that there are pre-made hat forms with the clips already attached available from eBay.  All you need to do is decorate them.  Well, don't that beat all?

So now you can make a nifty fascinator in less time, gathering fewer materials and without having to use every craft skill known to man- unless you WANT to.  So here you go!  Hatter Madness Tutorial number 2!

Materials:

• 1 Mini-top hat, bowler, tricorn or high top-hat
• Glue (Locktite or E6000) 
• Scissors
• Ribbon
• Some feathers
• Silk flowers
• Beads and other decorations

And now the instructions.  You'll be surprised at how easy they are!

Instructions:

1. Assemble the materials you want to use.
2. Make a basic design arrangement for your hat.
3. Glue the items to the hat in an order that best balances the decor and hides any unfinished edges.
4. Allow it to dry completely (Very important.  You don't want to super glue a hat to your head)
5. Wear it.

Christmas Hat

Working retail over the holidays kept me busy and tired, so I didn't go to many parties.  Let's face it, you're not going to be raising the roof with your girls if your feet hurt so bad you start thinking it might be better to live as an amputee.  No parties for me.
Knowing that I couldn't attend the Christmas shindigs or even stay in my own house to watch old Christmas movies really stung, so I was determined to make Christmas Eve fun for me- by making a hat.  An ostentatious, LED lit marvel of amateur hat-making science. 

This baby.

Let me start by first saying this: I had no idea what I was doing.  This hat is something made purely on a whim, with no prior experience besides making hair clips.  It also, very quickly, became an experiment to see how much stuff I could cram onto one small oval piece of felt without breaking my neck or having it fall off my head.  Despite this, I think it came out nicely.
I had no pattern to help in making this so I sort of followed my own mind.  It was actually fairly simple to make once I had assembled all the materials.  I'll include pictures of the less common ones.

Materials:
Two sheets of craft felt
 Two Hair extension combs

Hair Extension Combs: Photo From Human Hair Extension Manufacturer.com

Beads   (Any will do)
Hem Tape

Garland

I used something similar to this

 LED tea light
Christmas Trimmings
Scissors
Wire

Instructions:
1.  Cut the felt into ovals.  They will be your hat base.
2.  Mark where you want to place the combs (it's important that they're opposite one another otherwise it will fall off your head)  Hand sew them to one of the felt ovals.
3.  Assemble your Christmas Trimmings (I got most of mine from the dollar store).  Determine the basic layout you want them in before sewing or gluing them down.
4.  Hand sew or glue (E6000 for the win!) your Christmas Trimmings to the other oval of felt. I wanted a light on my hat so I had to cut a hole so that I could reach the switch.  I also wired a little golden Christmas tree light cover to it so the naked LED bulb wasn't showing. 
5. Hand sew the two felt ovals to one another, making sure the combs and decorations aren't sandwiched between the felt layers.
6. Measure the perimeter of the felt ovals, and cut the wire to that length plus 2 inches.  Twist the ends of the wire over it to secure them so they don't poke you in the head, then shape it to fit in your felt ovals.
7. Hand sew one side of the hem tape to one side of your felt oval.  Fold the hem tape to the other side of the felt oval, tuck the wire in the fold, begin sewing the other side of the hem tape to your hat base, keeping the wire oval inside the pocket formed by the hem tape.  Complete a full circuit around your hat, knot the thread, tuck the end into a hidden spot under the hat and wear. 


It's just that easy.  Why don't you try it?

BREAK!: Hatter madness!

Have you seen the fascinators?  They're everywhere.  Especially now since the Royal wedding.
To be honest, I rather like this trend, but I fell in love with it long before some goofy pampered girl went out looking like she was wearing an anatomy diagram on her head.  That Middleton girl ruined it for me in some ways.  Here's why.

In high school, I was deeply enamored with the goth, yamanba gyaru and gothic lolita movements in Japan.  They're subcultures that cater to intricate attire, accessories, a unique philosophy about life, and a certain fearlessness that only comes with true self-assurance.  Also, they look like thrice damned fools most of the time.
 In Japan, not only is individualism frowned upon, but even though they don't rely on pieces of paper and the internet to filter people out of the workforce (at least not as much as they do in America), the stuff you do on the weekends will ultimately mess with your social and work life.  It's not enough to just randomly toss on an odd accessory and go with it.  You have to go to ridiculous extremes to avoid being recognized.  If you want to wear a big bow on your head and that's not common, you better cover you face in glitter, stickers and false eyelashes.

The true faces of bravery

Actually, the Gyaru movement terrifies me.  Their philosophy of being as fake as possible to exaggerate consumerism as a CULTURE is pure nightmare fuel.  The worst thing about their movement as a whole is that they lump tons of tacky clothes and accessories together with a easy-money-live-fabulous philosophy in a mimicry of AMERICAN TEENS.  It really makes you wonder what depths culture will sink to next and how horribly wrong it can go.  Plus they look creepy.  *shudder*  Ugh!

The kitty hat is just adorable.

Lolita and Goth subcultures sort of struck a cord with me, though.  Idolizing simpler times, recognizing the inevitability of sadness, strife and death, but maintaining low stress hobbies, and a focus on creating an idealized world of safety and comfort for ...well everyone.  It was a very productive and welcoming seeming society.  Plus, they all wore cute little embroidered and bejeweled hats/bonnets to match their outfits.

Who doesn't want to look like a living porcelain doll?

 At any rate.  All that was just to say that I shall be embarking on a fascinator/hat making experience- which I shall post as I complete projects.