Trick or Treat Mon Amour

Trick or Treat Mon Amour is the name of my Witch's hat.  I was just playing with paper yesterday and thought it would be fun to try making a Witch's hat.  I love this time of year!!  The smell of the leaves on the ground, the cooler air, the deep blue skies up against the colored trees and we can't forget HALLOWEEN!!!!  I love Halloween.  I have a collection of glamor witches, and old worn grandma-like witches that make their way out of storage to show their lovely faces for a month.  I saw the Broadway show Wicked and if you did, you know that Elpheba was anything but a wicked witch!  Love her!!!  I had a hard time getting a picture that does the hat justice.  At times I would look at the pic and say "that doesn't even look like a hat".  Hopefully you can tell it's a hat.

I'll get back to the hat LOL!  I used some paper from my September Swirlydoos kit.  This paper is from My Mind's Eye.  I don't have any formal instructions or a tutorial for you because I made it up as I went along.  I had no idea if it was going to work so I didn't take pics.  I'm sorry, but I will try to explain what I did.  I know that you can find patterns online if you search for them.  I decided to just wing it and was having too much fun to follow directions!!!

The first thing I did was grab a 12x12 of patterned paper.  I love the damask page from MME.  It's very glamorous :-)  I twisted it into a cone shape (about a billion times) until I was happy with it.  I used a glue dot to secure the bottom and then cut off the excess.  It wasn't a perfect cut and the cone sat a little lopsided , but who cares!  This is about having fun, and who wants a perfect hat anyway...boo!   Then I guesstimated what size the brim should be.  I cut an 11" circle with my Cricut on a coordinating piece of MME.  I also decided to cut a circle out of thin cardboard (the kind that comes with the paper you order) to glue the brim to in order to give it some strength and stability.

I used a wet distress technique on the top of the hat.  I worked the water in gently on the inside and outside of the hat.  I dipped my fingers in the water and worked both sides at the same time.  I did this to about 80% of the hat top.  I wanted to keep the bottom stiff so that it would be more stable.  The wet distress gives it an old, worn look which is what I was going for.  Then I took some Black Soot Distress Ink and lightly went over the creases.

I used Glimmer Mist on the bottom of the brim so that it matched the top and to give it some sparkle.  I used some more Distress Ink around the edges to cover the card board and then over the top to grunge it up just a bit more.  I started working the card board so that it was more flexible and added an up-curl to one side of the brim and a bit more of a wavy edge around the rest of the brim. I also distressed the edge.  My new October kit from Swirlydoos came with these really neat transparency doilies.  I liked the way they looked on my hat, so arranged them on the brim and glued them down.

Then I took little strips of scrap paper to affix the top of the hat to the brim.  This is where online instructions and patterns would have you cut a little extra on the hat and bend it out so you could glue it.  Not me!  I did this one the hard way.  LOL  It still worked out.  I took some gorgeous Webster's Bloomers Trim and went around the bottom of the hat where it meets the brim.  My dear friend Wendy made me some flowers and I used the big black one.  Isn't it pretty!!!  I had a feather spray in my stash that was perfect as well as some little flowers, doo-dads, and rhinestone flourishes. I had this spider web butterfly that I got at Micheal's and glued that to the top along with another feather.  The last thing I did was add a potion to an ATC card and glue that onto the hat.  In case you are interested the potion is how to get rid of smelly feet LOL!!!!

 

Well, I hope in some small way this has inspired you to throw out the directions and just play and figure it out as you go.  I had a great time trying and I'm sure that the hats I make going forward will get better each time.  TFL!!!