Ready to Be a Royal Guest

I’m a hat girl.

Always have been, always will be.  It’s only added to my semi-obsession that Cute Husband finds me especially adorable in hats.

So imagine my delight when my British friend Julie invited me to a champagne brunch and sweets to watch the Royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on Friday.  Per the invitation instructions, I am to dress up and wear a hat.

Is this my kinda party or what?!!!

At first, I took this as an opportunity to purchase a new hat.  Although let’s be honest here people, Garbage Day is really an occasion to purchase a new hat in my book.  I searched every store in my city with no real luck.  We were in Boston recently and I bought something there, but knew I wasn’t in love with it and it’s going back.  But last night inspiration struck with a lightning bolt {and by that I mean at 8:15 pm, I had to dash out of the house to Michael’s in a frenzy in order to get some ribbon that coordinated with my dress for the hat band since I knew all the stores would be closed on Easter Sunday}.

I started with one of my favorite simple beach hats.  Very basic, and most importantly, fits my super-sized head.

I covered the natural band with some one inch grosgrain ribbon in the same aqua as my dress and simply tied a knot tightly as I don’t want any of these embellishments to be permanent {when you see the finished product I think we will all agree it’s a wee bit too much for wearing beside the swimming pool!}.

Then I took a bunch of these satin circles

And turned them into these {there are about a million tutorials online for making satin flowers, so I won’t take up space here.  If you haven’t made them before, please believe me they are EASY and quick, so grab some fabric and get cutting!}.

Now clearly that’s WAY more flowers than I’ll need for one hat {even MY super-sized head isn’t THAT big!}, but I like to have a lot of options ready to go and I know I’ll make hair accessories out of the leftovers for some little girls I know.

I played around with placement of the flowers in a few different ways, which involved a lot of me running back and forth to a mirror, precariously holding several flowers to the hat and trying to see myself from each angle and then back to the craft room for adjustments.  I run a really smooth operation here.

It needed something, but I wasn’t sure what.  And then I knew.  FEATHERS!  This was a royal wedding after all.  And Kate wears the BEST hats and fascinators with feathers.  I needed to get my hands on some aqua and green feathers immediately.  So I did what any loving mother does.  Tore apart my daughter’s Halloween costume.  Hey!  I made it, I can tear it apart for spare parts, right?

I grabbed the peacock feathers from her hood, attached them in a very similar way to the band of the hat and then added satin flowers to cover my felt “patch.”

And lest you think this project took hours upon hours, I should let you in on how I spent most of my day today….

Linked to:

Creative Jewish Mom, C.R.A.F.T., The DIY Showoff, The Girl Creative, Keeping it Simple, Between Naps on the Porch, Making the World Cuter, Sumo’s Sweet Stuff, Skip to My Lou, Mad in Crafts, Craft-o-Maniac, Running with Glitter, Coastal Charm, Tip Junkie, Today’s Creative Blog, Hope Studios, Sugar Bee Crafts, Bowl Full of Lemons, Not Just a Housewife, All Thingz Related, Sew Much Ado, My Backyard Eden, Blue Cricket Design, The Blackberry Vine, Elements Interiors, Organize and Decorate Everything, The Thrifty Home, 733, Someday Crafts, Somewhat Simple, Beyond the Picket Fence, Night Owl Crafting, The Shabby Chic Cottage, Paisley Passions, Fireflies & Jellybeans, House of Hepworths, Momnivore’s Dilemma, Fingerprints on the Fridge, Finding Fabulous, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, My Romantic Home, The Shabby Nest, Tatertots and Jello