What Are You Working On is a community diary series for all things crafty, in a variety of mediums and techniques.
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I worship at Mount Tabor Lutheran and we have a small tradition of Easter bonnets. I never cared about it before, however, now that I am newly single, I am trying out some new things.
I missed the workshop aka hat-making party hosted by one of the ladies, so I set to work in my kitchen. I chose a few flowers at Michaels, brighter colors that matched my kids' clothing, and some white and yellow small flowers to fill in.
Here is the hat, a plain black "packable" sunhat from Kohl's. I chose a pale gold ribbon - the brighter gold ribbons were all "wired", and I wanted one that would drape, so I was left with the pale gold. I cut the ends with pinking shears and put a dot of glue at the crossing.
I began trimming a few flowers from their bunches and discovered I needed wire cutters. Then I just places the blooms here and there and tried the hat on gently to see how they looked.
In fact, here are all my tools: ribbon, pliers with wire cutter, regular scissors, pinking shears, glue gun.
I kept walking back and forth from my work area in the kitchen to the other end of the house, where my bathroom mirrors were. Sometimes my flowers fell off, but I had so few it wasn't hard to remember what went where. You might want to bring a mirror closer to your work surface, or move your work surface closer to your mirrors. ;-) I tried a few things, like this ferny greenery, that didn't seem to add anything. Since I was totally inexperienced at this, I wanted to keep things pretty simple.
I pinned up a spot on the brim to give the hat a little structure. Then I began to place the flowers in place with bits of glue.
Here you can see my whole pile of flowers in the background, along with the flowers in place. I angled the smaller flowers toward the back, to try to distribute the weight evenly. It also made a nice effect, imho (in my humble opinion).
Here is the finished hat, along with a little corsage I made for my son from the leftovers. I just wrapped the two stems for him with some floral tape. On the hat, I chose a lightweight butterfly and glued it into place. I thought about a second butterfly, but it didn't really look right.
So the thing with these floral arrangements and hat decorating - you can lay the things out and change them until you like the look. Even after you glue, if you are very careful you can peel the glue off.
It was a lot of fun and my hat was well-complimented at church.
Earlier in the day, the kids and I dyed and decorated eggs, using a kit from kos-friend Ellinoriane and Eco-Kids. The dyes were plant-based and made in the USA. Their web site had the patterns and printouts for dressing the eggs up a bit. They included a bee, a bunny (who seems to be sleeping on his back), and a peacock.
My daughter made her own pattern, and here is a close-up:
On What Are You Working?