Kid's Crafts: How to Make a Paper, Vintage Style Hat with Flowers

This simple kid's craft project is fun to make and does allow for some individual interpretation in its composition and look. The finished product looks like a small vintage hat, adorned with flowers. It makes a sweet wall decoration.

The vintage style paper hat can be accented in any colours, depending on your choice of ribbons and dried flowers.

Supplies needed for the vintage style paper hat:

1 paper plate (the thin kind)

1 Styrofoam or paper bowl, standard sized

Dried flower petals

Ribbon ( The stiff wired kind looks best.)

Glue (Any white liquid craft glue will work.)

Water

A fat art paintbrush

Scissors

Rough brown paper towels (the industrial cheap kind not the nice white home kind.)

Drying area and surface for the flowers( A cookie sheet works great, since it can easily be moved around.)

The vintage style paper hat is done in three steps, so allow time for each step.

First step:

Go to any garden and gather flowers and flower petals of all kinds. Make sure you pick a variety to experiment with. Rose petals are one type that dry in nice muted colours that give the vintage paper hat the old world look. A variety of dried flower petals give the vintage paper hat a more textured look. The shapes of different flowers give it more visual appeal.

Take full flowers apart and spread the petals on newspaper or on a large cookie sheet. Spread them across the cookie sheet so they will get air and dry thoroughly. Place them in the sun for quicker results. This may take a few days. When they are completely dry they will have a feel almost like aged paper.

Once the flowers are dried you can begin the next step.

Second step:

Place a paper plate face up on your work surface.

Turn the paper or Styrofoam bowl upside down in the middle of the paper plate.

Tear the sheets of brown rough paper towels into strips and pieces like paper mache.

Mix a bowl of water and white glue. The recipe is two parts glue to one part water. Any white glue like Elmer's works. This mixture is what will hold the paper strips to the surface of the overturned bowl and the paper plate.

Wet the paper strips and lay them one by one across the surface of the bowl and plate. Make sure you go in different directions to give it more texture. Also place pieces across both the bowl and the plate at the same time. That way they are attached to each other with the gluey paper strips.

Don't worry about extra hanging over the edge of the paper plate.

Allow the paper hat to dry completely, so it feels crisp to the touch. Then trim off the extra paper toweling so the brim of the vintage paper hat is circular again.

Third step:

Pour some white glue in a bowl or some other surface. Another paper plate works fine.

With the paintbrush apply glue around the brim of the vintage paper hat and begin placing the dried flower petals around the hat.

Think about where you are hanging the hat when you choose your colours. Put quite a few dried flowers petals around the brim and partway up the dome of the vintage paper hat.

Once you have filled it in to your own visual tastes, take your ribbon and tie a bow . Then glue the bow in place so that the ends will dangle down, well past the paper brim surface, when it is hung up on the wall. Trim the ends cleanly in an upside down V shape. This gives the ribbon on the paper hat a vintage bonnet look.

Turn the plate over and cut out the middle of the paper plate below the bowl so it looks like a real hat you could put on. This gives you a place to use for hanging the vintage paper hat on the wall.

Voila !You have a vintage paper hat to hang on your wall.