...A tutorial for the witches hat

Well, Halloween is fast approaching and there's lots to do so just incase anyone feels like making a witches hat like the one on top of my Witch Jar - here's the how-to. The pic should get bigger if you click on it.

Step 1
On a piece of black card draw a circle 8 inches in diameter - mark the centre carefully so you can see it later. Stamp assorted spiders and webs - adding clear embossing powder as you go.

Step 2
Heat set the embossing powder and once the paper has cooled and the powder has set, cut out the circle.

Step 3
Find the centre mark and use a protractor to divide the circle into three equal segments. Cut apart. Each segment will make one hat.

Step 4
Apply thin, really sticky, double sided tape carefully along the back edge of one of the straight sides of the segment.

Step 5
Spend some time encouraging the segment into a sharp cone shape before you remove the tape cover and carefully stick the hat edges together. Don't overlap too much or your hat cone won't stand level.

Step 6
Decide what size of a hat brim you want (- I used a nestabilities circle to cut mine). Draw a circle of appropriate size on black paper and stamp and emboss with spiders and webs as before. Cut the circle out.

Step 7
You might like to mat the circle onto another, slightly larger, scalloped circle of contrasting colour. Now's the time to do that.

Steps 8 - 9
Decide on a suitable ribbon for the hat band and make a buckle by cutting a small rectangle from shiny silver card. make two slits or slots in the rectangle to allow the ribbon to be threaded through - I used my slot punch tool but slits would work equally well. I rounded the corners of my wee buckle with a pair of small scissors. Take a piece of ribbon - my piece was about 6 inches long, and thread on the buckle, pushing it to the centre of the ribbon.

Attach a little extra strong glue or tape to each end of the back of the ribbon.

Hold the buckle up to the front of the hat cone, about quarter inch to a half inch up from the cut edge. Smooth the ribbon away on either side allowing it to follow the shape of the cone. It will end up inside the cone - press firmly to adhere the glue - see pic 9.

Step 10
Your hat should look like pic 10 now with both ends of the ribbon disappearing up inside the cone. This finishes the cut ends away nicely.

Steps 11 - 12
Decide now whether you want the hat to be for decoration or whether you want it to open up revealing a secret compartment.

To seal the hat and make it into a decoration - take 4 little strips of scrap card and put double sided tape on one side of each. Fold each strip in half, and attach to the inside of the hat so that half of each strip hangs out. the strips of card will hang out of the hat and will stick to the hat brim once you set the cone on top of it. If you have used extra sticky tape it will not come apart.
it should look like pic 12.

Step 13
To make the hat open, use only one strip of scrap card as a hinge. position it at the back of the hat. Make another hat cone but without the stamping and embossing - refer to steps 1-5 for help. This is the liner. Snip about an inch of the top of the liner and put it up inside the hat cone affixing it with tape or glue. Now you can't see the hinge inside the hat.

Stick the hat cone onto the hat brim using the hinge. Disguise the hinge on the hat brim by cutting a wee strip of black card, or even a wee circle of card to stick over it. I stuck a strip of black card over my hinge and folded the edge back on itself so that it would provide something for the cone to close down over - the tiny bit of friction helps the hat stay closed when i'm moving it about.

As always, I'd love to see any that are made!!

Hope it tickles.