Remember back in your childhood. Did you ever fold a paper hat out of a piece of news paper or shape a cone hat from bright constructions paper for a birthday party?
This is not that kind a paper hat.
Those hats you fashioned as an imaginative child were easy to make, you produced them quickly and then easily disposed of them once the party or imaginary pirate raid was over. They had served their purpose and you went on to some other happy childhood pursuit.
But this silly hat was a little more complicated to put together. It took several hours and it never had any real purpose. Crazy. Right?
What can I say? Sometimes I just make things to see if I can. :-)
For some reason one day I thought to myself "I wonder if I could make a hat out of woven magazine paper" and the enthusiastic cheerleader part of my personally said "Of course you can! You should give it a try." At the same time the disproving skeptical part of my personality was also chiming in with "What on earth are you going to do with a hat made out of magazine paper?"
Neither I nor my cheerleader self had an answer for that question but we are frivolous and lighthearted when we get together and so we just forged ahead and didn't listen to the doubting questions from our other selves.
Together we made this hat that, I am well aware, may solidify my outlier status in normal society. :-)
Believe it or not I have actually made more absurderor things, like the word absurderor for example. :-)
I once covered our pool table to look like a giant lady bug. I made a party dress from men's t-shirt. And recently I recovered a chair using pickle juice glue. These are not the things I generally talk about with my friends and acquaintances as I prefer to appear as normal as possible out in the big wide world.
Ah but here... here I can let you glimpse into the cogs and whistles and bells that turn and toot and ring in my head. If you are familiar with the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang you may remember the scene where Dick Van Dike uses this wildly elaborate, fun and whimsical machine to cook sausage and eggs.
That is a little bit how my brain works. Sometimes isn't it just more fun to serve your breakfast from a train track? Or in my case make a useless paper hat just for the fun of it?
If you are still with me here is a little bit more about this crazy project.
It took many pages of rolled magazine paper.
Each piece was glued with hot glue to secure the weave. And eventually I had a piece big enough for the pattern pieces.
The pieces were cut out without any seam allowance and then glued together with more hot glue.
To finish the edge and secure the "seams" I added some black knit fabric from an old t-shirt.
I may never have a use for this silly paper hat but I am happy to have made it. I am always happiest when I listen to my cheerleader self. After all she is my biggest fan. She is a wild thing that does not like to be tamed and she helps me find my bolder self.
Happy Upcycling,
