Paper Plate Easter Bonnet

Last year I was really pleased with how the Paper Plate Easter Bonnet, inspired by Philip Treacy, turned out, so I turned to paper plates- one of my favourite kid’s crafting tools- when I needed to make one for this year’s parade. And all you need is glue, a large paper plate, some doilies and some ribbon.

It really was a very simple craft: so much so that Dimples- just 3- did almost all the work by herself.

The first step is to cover both sides of your paper plate in doilies. You could substitute tissue paper or kids’ artwork, but doilies are already patterned and have a lacy-effect which make them ideal.

Once that is done, take a length of ribbon*, about 90cm or two metres, so that you can tie in a big bow at the end-and stick across the width of the top side of the hat. Perversely this is actually the bottom of the plate, as paper plates naturally bend into themselves towards the upper side. I reinforced this by stapling the ribbon the edge of the plate.

Finally, decorate your hat: we made flowers from the doilies, using the technique from our Swedish Floral Crown. Dimples also made a few ‘bows’ from scrunched up crepe streamer.

And that’s it!

 

*we used crepe paper streamer in the picture but it kept breaking when being tied up so I had to alter the hat to use ribbon instead