Bunny Butt Easter Hat

It’s coming up to that time of year that we all love…the Easter Hat Parade! Our school will be holding the parade mid next week, just before we break for school holidays.

In previous years we have created hats in the theme of the current favourite characters. Last year we had a Harry Potter-inspired hat, the year before it was How To Train Your Dragon, we’ve also done Pikachu and Angry Birds…you get the idea! But this year our son decided he just wanted to go Easter themed.

As I was searching Pinterest for inspiration, I came across some ‘bunny butt’ designs which I had noticed in previous years, but not pinned. Now they are, and you can see them here and here! They are on my Easter Pinterest board.

It seemed the time had come to create a Bunny Butt Easter Hat lol

I bought a hat to use as the base ($1.85), and some fake carrots ($2), then tried to think of something we could use from around the house as bunny fur. A towel!

I cut up an old brown towel, but could not come up with a way to cover the hat without unsightly joins.

A quick look at Spotlight’s website, and I found they had cheap craft wadding. Perfect! And it was on sale!

So we had a visit to Spotlight where we picked up some beautiful fluffy wool as well as the wadding. And I probably spent more on petrol than I did on these 2 items (Just for reference, it was $1.80 for 30cm of wadding and I used just over half of that, and $1.50 for the wool on sale)

The wadding was very easy to shape over the hat, and where I cut the excess off was gently pulled together and is very hard to see. We had to do 2 layers though, because we could see the yellow hat underneath. I used some wadding off-cuts on top of the hat to give it a rounder shape.

I was a bit worried that the hot glue would melt the wadding, but it seems to be holding up.

I introduced our son to pom pom making, and he did it all by himself! If you haven’t made them before, there are plenty of tutorials on how to make pom poms, just google it 🙂

We cut some feet from white felt which I already had. Pink texta worked well for the details.

The double layer of wadding makes for a very big butt, and doesn’t leave much brim left for adding trim. But we certainly couldn’t leave the hat like this (not that we ever planned to)!

I looked for some green shredded paper to use as grass, but it was all sold out this week. No problem! We can shred paper ourselves! I painted a couple of spare sheets of paper green, and when the were dry, the hat-wearer cut them into thin strips. We do actually have a paper shredder…but of course it was no-where to be seen when we wanted to use it.

I crumpled the ‘grass’ up, and glued it around the brim of the hat. Then added the carrots.

It cost around $5 to buy the materials we used. Add a little extra for glue sticks, paint, felt that we already had, electricity, and I still think it would come in at under $8 for our one-of-a-kind hat.

I think it has turned out very well, and the wearer is happy with our results!

I’ll update with a picture from the parade next week 🙂

If your kids have a Hat Parade, what will they be wearing?

*UPDATE 6/4/17 – The parade was held yesterday, so here are a couple of photos of the hat actually being worn. For the first time since we’ve been at school, the parade had to be held in the hall due to unsettled weather. It was still a very fun and colourful time!

Linking up with:

21 Rosemary Lane – Share Your Style, Too Much Time on my Hands – The Handmade Hangout, Have a Daily Cup of Mrs Olson – Share Your Cup, Organised 31 – This is How We Roll, Sincerely, Paula – No Rules Weekend Blog Party, The Life of Jennifer Dawn – A Little Bird Told Me, The Pin Junkie, Life With Lorelei – Home Matters, Shoestring Elegance – What To Do Weekends, Tatertots and Jello – Best Friday Features, Raising Fairies and Knights – Bloggers Spotlight, Simply Sweet Home – Friday Favorites, Oh My Heartsie Girl – Friday Features, Strawberry Butterscotch – Saturday Shuffle, Little Miss Celebration – Best of The Weekend, Nifty Thrifty Things, Love of Home – Sundays at Home, My Husband Has Too Many Hobbies – Snickerdoodle Create Make Bake, That Recipe – Happiness is Homemade, Plucky’s Second Thought – Cooking and Crafting With J&J, Claire Justine – Creative Mondays, Create With Joy – Inspire Me Monday, I Should Be Mopping The Floor – Inspiration Monday, The DIY Mommy – The Creative Corner, DIY 180 – Dishing It and Digging It, My Pinterventures – Merry Monday, Yesterday on Tuesday – Project Inspired, My Husband Has Too Many Hobbies – Brag About It, Lou Lou Girls Fabulous Party, Our Home Away From Home – Tuesdays at Our Home, Epic Mommy Adventures – Turn it up Tuesday, The Dedicated House – Make It Pretty Monday, Cedar Hill Farmhouse – The Scoop,