iCraft Australia: Mini Top Hats By Kerrie Barnes

Mini Top Hats

Hello everyone and welcome back to the iCraft blog. My newest creations are mini top hats, made from the very stunning Country Garden and Bloom De Fleur paper collections.

I started by downloading a template from the internet and sizing it to my specifications. I traced and then cut two base pieces of box board approximately 16.5 cm long and 15.5 cm wide. These pieces became the brims for my hats. Then I traced and cut two crown pieces from box board measuring approximately 11.5 cm long by 9.5 cm wide. Next came the hat bands and they were a little trickier. I traced the template that I'd downloaded, but I decided I wanted them slightly longer and wider. Out of sheets of Country Garden and then Bloom De Fleur, I cut hat bands measuring approximately 30 cm long, 9.5 cm wide, plus a foldable tab measuring 8.5 cm. See picture below for template.

I cut the various papers for each hat and glued them onto my box board. I used only paper from the collections for the hat bands because box board would have been way to hard to bend. I then attached the bands to the crowns with 450 glue and once dry, I glued the dried band and crown onto the hat base/brim.

I wove ribbon around the bands and topped them with lace, then added double bows at the backs of both hats.

I used feathers from my vast collection of goodies and attached those above the bows, then added iCraft flowers to the ribbons as well as iCraft string pearls. I am a terrible photographer, but if you look closely, you can see the beautiful iCraft fan wooden embellishment behind the feathers on the brown hat, and an iCraft wooden frame embellishment on the pink hat. I used various iCraft paints on these embellishments as well.

I used trims around the base edges of each hat as well as the crown. I also used two metal cameos from my stash and painted them with various iCraft paint before gluing them to the front of each top hat. I have never made top hats before, so this was a real learning experience for me. I hope I have inspired you all to create weird, wonderful and wacky top hats.