Hallowe'en... the Costume

I was recently invited to a Halloween-themed event, which will be a fundraiser for SHARE house, our local homeless shelter... a great organization. The hostess has told us all to wear "funny hats" instead of full costumes, so I immediately started brainstorming some way of integrating collage into my hat to make it completely unique. A trip to Goodwill was fruitless... nothing there (at least nothing collage-able) to fit my oversized skull! So, I went home and tried my hand at constructing a simple witches hat from posterboard. Turns out that wasn't quite as simple as I imagined... but I finally turned out a pointy hat. It is a bit small, confound it... but, I'll wear it anyway, secured with a ribbon under my chin. Luckily, it fits my daughter perfectly, so she'll wear it for trick-or-treat night!

I had a stack of old... and I'm talking OLD... newspapers from Missouri and Iowa that my grandmother acquired many years ago from a neighbor of hers. The dates range from the late 1890's (when my grandmother was a young child) to around 1910. It is all in terrible condition... literally crumbles in my hands, so I've used it for a few collage projects, slathered liberally with plenty of gel medium to hold it together and preserve it.  For this project, I selected quite a few old advertisement, plus (since it's also "that" season) political cartoons and headlines... and anything to do with gruesome events such as murders and horrific natural disasters... to complete the dark theme that surrounds Hallowe'en and the Day of the Dead.

I just layered these fragile bits of paper on and covered the entire surface of the hat... and the underside of the brim and created a collaged witches hat. This was so much fun... reading through some of the articles and editorials, and imagining the mindset of midwestern America prior to World War ONE! There were still ads for buggies and surreys... not yet for automobiles. This was before antibiotics... so there were many ads for various elixers and tonics that would "cure" anything from catarrh to syphilis!

I pulled together a really eclectic mixture of interesting things to see and read... and spent exactly zero money on my party hat (unless you count that half jug of gel medium). I added a wee bit of distress ink to the edge of the brim of the hat... but most of the aging and distressing is natural! Once the collaging was done, I dressed the hat up a little bit with some vintage rick-rack and ribbon, then wired on some plastic skeletons as spooky-funky accessories. I'm looking forward to using it as a centerpiece, as well as a costume hat! Now... just enjoy a few more shots of the project in process...