In my quest to get our Halloween costumes finished early this year, I have been doing lots and lots of online research. One of the cool things I have found are some really pretty pirate hats decorated with ribbon, lace and other trims by different crafters. There are a few tutorials but mostly people selling these gorgeous hats on Etsy.com. I, of course, would like to decorate my own hat, so that it matches my outfit and so that I can add what I want to it. I’ll write more on that later…
I ordered some hats off of eBay that can be decorated however we want. They are plain, black, wide-brimmed wool hats that will work perfectly for the pirate costumes. They are pretty floppy though, and that might it difficult to work on them. I was toying with different ideas on what I could use to make the whole process easier. After some thought I decided that the foam forms that you can get at beauty supply stores would probably be the easiest and most economical. The forms generally run about $5.00 give or take a few quarters.
So after deciding that that the foam forms are what I needed I remembered that the closest beauty supply store had closed a few months ago. I had already run errands earlier in the day and going out again in 108 degree weather held no appeal. I took a few moments for a quick internal discussion and started looking at what I could do with what I had in the house. We have one foam form that we use at Halloween to display one of many masks and/or hats. I had seen some tutorials on making duct tape dress forms** the other day and I wondered if I could use the same technique to make my own hat display.
I didn’t think to take pictures until I was almost done with the second form so bear with me.
Materials –
- foam head form
- plastic bag
- duct tape
- cardboard
- stuffing (plastic bags, newspaper, etc)
I started with the foam head and covered it with a plastic grocery bag. I used strips of duct tape around the neck the part to hold the bag down and pull it tight around the form. Next I started ripping strips of duct tape and wrapping the plastic covered foam form. I split the strips vertically, some half the width and some in thirds. I used the third widths across and along the nose and eyes to contour to the shape of the form. The half widths I used starting along the jawline and moved up the side of the form. I also put a long piece of tape down the center starting above the nose and continuing down the back of the neck. I continued to lay down strips until the entire form was covered. I did my first layer with a solid color duct tape and a decorative duct tape for the second layer. The second layer is just like the first, I was just more careful to smooth down the duct tape.
When the form was covered with the second layer then I cut through the duct tape/plastic up the back and pulled the duct tape covering off of the form. Use another few strips of the patterned duct tape to close up the back again.
I used plastic grocery bags and crumpled up newspapers/ad mailers for stuffing, I was careful to fill in the contoured areas with the bags and filled the center with the crumpled paper. I traced the bottom of the foam form on cardboard and cut it out. After it was filled as much as it was going to be I put in the cardboard and covered it with the decorative duct tape.
Here are the final results. Now I have two hat forms that i can stick pins into and keep the hat in place while I work on decorating them. Clearly, I could have bought two of the foam forms for about $10 and in about a third of the time that I spent making these. For me, it was about being resourceful and using the materials that I had close at hand. I am pretty pleased.
**Duct tape dress forms – Google “how to make a duct tape dress form” for tutorials. I liked this one, it has good info on the duct tape part, this one has more details on how to set up the form.
Literally Blue 