A post about making a prototype hat base out of card stock.
Quest For A Hat Base
I’ve been surfing around the internets (primarily Pinterest) looking at various fascinators and hat bases. I was initially thinking of buying or making a sinamay fascinator base but decided that I want to hide the wires and components as much as possible so something made of mesh probably wouldn’t cut it. I decided to try and make a little prototype base out of card stock, fabric, and paper components.
How can I make a paper fascinator base?
Easily!
Step 1: Steal some nice card stock
I nicked mine from work but you could try stealing it from an art or stationary store. Or you could even buy it from one of the aforementioned places. However, not having done this myself, I can’t speak to its effectiveness.
Step 2: Find a circular bowl or plate
Make sure it is approximately the size you want for your base. I found a bowl in my kitchen. It was clean but a dirty bowl would also work. Just make sure it’s empty.
Step 3: Trace the bowl or plate on the card stock and cut out the circle
I used an x-acto knife to cut this out (also “borrowed” from work) but you might already own a pair of scissors that would be just as effective.
Step 4: Make a cut along the radius of the circle
Just cut from the middle to the edge.
Step 5: Glue it in a cone
Dab a bit of Elmer’s along one side of the cut and overlap the other side on top of it so that your circle suddenly pops into 3D and magically becomes a little cone. Hold in place with bobby pins until glue is relatively dry.
Congratulations! You’ve made the base of a fascinator.
Then you cut out paper versions of the electronics?
Yup. I wanted to make sure that everything fit on the base. Also, I was enjoying the arts and crafts atmosphere. I traced the components and connected them with some scrap wire and glued or otherwise stuck them on the base. Then I cut out a circle of fabric that was just slightly larger than the circle for the base and used it to cover everything, but with holes for the NeoPixels to stick out.
What did you learn?
Anything made with funky paper shapes and wire reminds me of an Alexander Calder sculpture. Also, I will probably not be using the conductive thread on this project. I’m anticipating fussing a lot with the plastic bits that will overlay the NeoPixels and base, and I want the freedom of not having everything sewn down. But I’m already scheming up another Gemma wearables project that would use a lot of conductive thread so my bobbin won’t go to waste.
Also, I think I like hats.
