fiesta to fabulous

a mere couple days ago i was gifted a few tickets to a "mouse derby" fund raiser where there would be mouse races, and in honor of the kentucky derby a "derby hat contest.  it's not a big deal, but when i saw one of the prizes was a sapphire bracelet i proclaimed a "game on".

i also put a challenge upon myself, that my derby hat would be made of only items i already have.  read: this hat would be free.  challenge accepted!

my first step was to find my base.  i don't own many hats, but we have a fedora or 2, and a top hat, but they are all nice and nothing i would want to bedazzle for a silly contest.  a simple fascinator idea was always a plan b, but then i found it.  down in the kids' dress-up stuff . . . a sombrero.

i remember buying this sombrero for my (now passed) grandma's birthday party years ago.  sidenote: a fiesta with sombreros and moustaches is a perfectly appropriate birthday party held in a nursing home.
so, i knew it was perfect.  not only was it worthy of a makeover, but it had all the bones of a great big brim derby hat.  i immediately checked to see if the brim could be turned down instead of up, and it worked!  marvelous!

transformation, part 1: removal all traces of sombrero-ness.

removing the thread detail was surprisingly tedious.  they really want that decoration to last forever.

next, i gathered crap and bedazzlements to make my masterpiece:

once i had a bunch of stuff to work with (silk flowers beads, ribbon, fabrics, etc) i laid it all out to get an idea of color schemes and what i might actually want to use.

THIS is the group of colors i decided to go with.  i am in a huge teal phase right now, so i blame that.  once i had this figured out i could paint the hat.  i have a pretty good collection of spray paint, and so i just went out, grabbed the first one that caught my eye, and sprayed it down.

what color did i choose?  nuclear green.

next - time to start attaching . . . crap.
the first thing i attached was this tuelley crap around the edge.  there were a couple holes in the edge that needed camoflauge, and i regret the tuelle 100%, but hot glue is great because it hold everything down.  even if you don;t want it to.

this is where i stopped taking a bunch of photos.  i just got into the gluing and burning my fingers and cursing and joy of it all.

three hours later:

so, i was pretty happy with it at this point, except for the pointy sombrero hat part.  that really bugged me.

and also that i felt it wasn't funny?  i'm not a serious person, so i wanted it to be a little more funny and whimsical, and perhaps appropriate for a "mouse derby".

my solution:  cut off the top and add mice!  i also lined the inside of the top of the hat with teal, cause why not?

see the little mouse?  they were hiding in the flowers all the way around ;)

it looks better on my head than looking down at it

and from tonight at the mouse derby races:

my hat was by far the best hat at the derby.  all the others were store bought and quite ordinary.  that being said, i did not win.  the winners were chosen by audience vote, and so the ladies with the most friends present seemed to take the prizes (i will note here that they advertised a panel of judges, otherwise i wouldn't have bothered).  i'm miffed about losing, but not about my fabulous hat ;)