A Top Hat for Halloween

To continue from my recent post about customising hats, here is another that I got my hands (and glue gun) on.

This time around, my inspiration was the hats of Kikirara Shoten, a fantastic purveyor of weird hats, unusual corsets, and unique accessories in Japan.

The hat is a basic top hat from a fancy dress shop. Sadly it’s a bit tight on my head, but I love how it turned out!

I used multipurpose glue to attach gathered lace trim around the brim. This hides the ugly brim edge that screamed ‘I bought this from a party shop’! Then I added a piece of ribbon (to replace the hideous plastic one) and glued on a strip of marabou. 

Everything else is attached with a glue gun. Hooray for glue guns!

This little picture frame feature on one side is my favourite part.

I didn’t buy anything specifically for this hat: aside from the frame and bats, everything was left over from other projects. The frame came from a charity shop (more recently I used another one to make a necklace) and the bats were amongst my Halloween decorations.

Admittedly the bat side doesn’t look as ‘cool’. I didn’t want this side of the hat to draw too much attention from the picture frame, so went for something simpler. In hindsight, perhaps I should add some extra decoration!

Here are some unusual hats I’ve found online that have particularly tickled my fancy.

Source: hautemacabre.tumblr.com via Kei on Pinterest

Source: kikirarashoten.com via Kei on Pinterest

Source: victoriantradingco.com via Kei on Pinterest

Will be linking up to the parties listed below!