Among the Christmas ornaments IN 2006 I found packages of inexpensive black and white resin hats and shoes. Although both seemed a little small in scale, I bought one package of each variety.
When I signed up for a hat shop swap, I decided to see if I could use those hats as the basis for some makeovers.
First I coated the hats with gesso to make new paint colors adhere better.
Here is one hat with just a bit of tweaking (paint not dry yet). I added a deep purple ribbon and used a gold leafing pin to recolor the trim. Not bad for a simple 20s, 30s hat.
In my stash was a Cheap Thrills purchase of some rosette trims from Joann Fabrics, I think. I decided to cut them apart and see how they might work as hat trims.
This gives a nice beige ready-ruffle possibility.
Here is another of the resin cloche hats, gessoed and then painted off-white. I have painted the flower trim that was already there with gold and am preparing to glue a frill around it.
Because these hats already had bows and flowers, etc., it wasn't easy working around them. Gluing the gathered frill around this flower helped dress up this cloche. (Sorry, but I forgot to take photos from other angles for this hat.)
I decided to experiment further and added a pre-pleated ribbon trim to make a brim and liked the effect, so made several.
Actually the contrast between the frill and the brim on some of these is not so pronounced in real life as this photo suggests.
I experimented with various pen colors atop the gold.
For this one I used an orange pen to highlight the center.
Cheap Thrills, but hats all the same. (You will find one of these hats in Miss Minnie's Hattery Flattery hat shop.)
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