https://www.cutoutandkeep.net/projects/mini-party-hat • Posted by Spark and Chemistry
Ready to party? Here's a fun, girly DIY for your Valentine's Day get-together. Mini hats! These are so cute to make and are great props for photo booths. To make these, I've used my left over ribbon spools from Christmas. Every time I want to throw something away, I have to stop and think about how I can use it for a future DIY; and, fancy that, my ribbon spools worked perfect as party mini hats. Picture
Ready to party? Here's a fun, girly DIY for your Valentine's Day get-together. Mini hats! These are so cute to make and are great props for photo booths. To make these, I've used my left over ribbon spools from Christmas. Every time I want to throw something away, I have to stop and think about how I can use it for a future DIY; and, fancy that, my ribbon spools worked perfect as party mini hats. Picture
Gather your ribbon spools. If you don't have ribbon spools you can create this DIY using thin cardboard (like cereal boxes). You'll want to look for a size that will work for the mini hat. The "top hat" part of my mini hat used a spool of about 4" in diameter. See that tall spool in the photo above? I cut that in half and used it for the "round cylinder" part of the hat. The green spool in the photo was used as the brim (I cut off the ends). I wanted the hat to have a tapered look, so I cut off the end of a spool that was slightly larger than the cylinder to use for the "top of the hat." Confusing? Let's put the frame together and hopefully that better explains it.
So we see the "brim" of the hat, which most people can recognize, but the hat is also composed of the wide cylinder in the center, and I added a slightly larger piece in diameter at the top. When the fabric is covering it, you'll see that stacking the pieces this way gives the hat the tapered look (wider at the top and gradually getting smaller at the bottom). Using hot glue, glue the "top" flat piece, to the cylinder, making sure it is centered. So now they become one piece instead of two.
Lay a 10-inch plate on top of the fabric you chose. Trace around the plate to create a much bigger circle than the hat itself. The object is to get the fabric to totally cover the top of the hat. The size of the plate depends on how large your hat is. I found that a circle the size of a 10-inch plate worked.
Once you've traced around the plate, cut out the circle. On the "bad" side of the fabric, find the center of the circle and hot glue the cylinder of the hat to the fabric circle. Make sure that the top of the hat (the widest part) is lying on the fabric. It is key to get this as centered as you can.
Cut the fabric in strips, following the circle. Do not cut all the way to the center, as you don't want any holes for the next step. Fold up each strip and hot glue them down to the opposite end.
Pull up tightly on each strip to make it tight and secure. In the photo in the previous step, it looks like I'm gluing the strips to the top of the hat, but it's really the bottom. Once all the strips are glued down, flip the hat over and you'll see that it creates a tapered look. The next step is to add the brim.
To create the brim, take the third piece, the end of the ribbon spool, and trace around it on scrapbook paper. Your brim should be a lot larger in diameter than the rest of the hat.
Create two circles and use a simple glue stick to glue the three pieces together to make a sandwich: scrapbook paper- spool end- scrapbook paper.
There may be a thin gap around the edges that you want to cover. To do so, run a thin line of Elmer's glue around the edge and roll it in glitter. This seemed to cover the gap perfectly.
Set the brim to the side to dry.
Hot glue the brim to the top hat, making sure it's in the dead center. Make sure the widest part of the hat is at the top. Now you have most of it complete! Here you can see how adding the slightly wider piece at the top of the hat, gives it a tapered look when the fabric covers it.
I gathered some scrapbook stickies, beads, sticky hearts, and flowers. I knew I wasn't going to use all of it, but it's good to have it on hand. The idea is to cluster the pieces together on the side to create a focal point on the hat. Since this is for Valentine's day, I chose to use only hearts. With the hot glue gun, carefully layer them to create a cluster of pieces on the side.
Finally, hot glue your mini hat to a headband. You can hot glue it directly on top if you like, but I think it's cuter to glue it at an angle. Turn the hat upside down as it dries to the headband so that the weight of the hat doesn't cause it to fall off. Once it dries, it should be fine. And that's it!