Meet the new sheriff in town

Yep, mom's working on a new steampunk costume for herself! Well, I mean she's got me working on one for her. ;)



Remember the felt hats we reworked a couple posts back? Well, we found another hat we couldn't pass up. We got the hat, a Styrofoam head and a hat box all for $5. I'm using the head to put my paper mache steampunk hat on so the brim won't get smushed and deformed. Ironically, the hat we bought is too wide for the box. Go fig. That's okay, though. I'm sure it will make a nice home for one of our many new hats.



Yay! I didn't forget the before shots! The pic above was after all the dust and everything was cleaned off. Honestly, I might not even have noticed the hat sitting in the corner of the shop covered with another pillbox style hat and a half inch layer of dust on top of it. After cleaning, the hat turned out pretty nice, but didn't do anything for either my mom or me. It just kinda hung limp and lifeless. I was planning to just trim the brim shorter and more contoured to make it a more hip twenties style hat. However, my mom loved the brown pork pie western hat we came up with last time so much, that she wanted a black one for her future gambler/sheriff outfit shes working on.



So into the sink it went to come out an extra wide brimmed pork pie like the brown one. I had to soak the hat in a mixture of one small bottle white school glue and water to stiffen it up more.



She found this sheriff badge at the flea market along with a "stinking badge" that I got to keep. (I couldn't resist. I just love movies like "Blazing Saddles".) The hat band was a belt we found at a secondhand store for 5o cents. I shortened it to fit, and we had some left over to make her an armband like the garters dealers wear to hold their sleeves up. The cards came from an old deck of cards I had that were getting marked by all the heavy use. (With no TV, cards are a popular family day activity in our house.) BTW, I used some of the lower cards of this same deck in my tablet weaving experiments a long time back.



We're currently planning some Victorian-style hat pins. Mom wants to have some with clear red dice on the tips. I think that will be a really cool idea. Now, just have to get it made. :)

Until next time!