"There is a Easter hat competition in my school and I have to wear it for Easter hat parade” said my 5 yr old to me excitedly and here is me, Easter hat/ Bonnet, what is it now?? Do we have to make it ourselves? How to make that wearable? Can we just buy a hat and decorate it? I had no clue what it is all about!
When I discussed it with one of my dear friend she told me about the beautiful tradition of Easter bonnet. No Easter hat celebration in primary school is complete without the Easter bonnet.
Next was to do research to make one on our own! When we browsed the internet, it was flooded with so many ideas and it added to the confusion but we my son had something else in mind he said instead of simple decoration I want to add a social message with it.
His idea was to show two faces of the earth, the green face and the ill or sad face. The massage that we wanted to give was “For future springs save our home now”
Next step was to execute the idea practically! So with rough outline in my mind, I started working on my first ever Easter bonnet and we were quite happy with the final outcome.
I was focusing on the decorations only. So, I made a hat with the cardboard sheets. You can use any normal hat or can make one with cardboard. In normal hat cut the top so that your earth can fit in.
Here is the details of the items I used:
- Balloon
- News paper/ tissue paper
- Craft knifes
- Cardboards
- Colours and brush
- Ribbon
- Some printouts
- Few real dry twigs and green grass
- Tissue papers
- Plastic toys
- Other easter related thing like eggs,chickens etc
- Coloured papers
- Glue/ Glue gun
Have a look at the steps by step pictorial presentation of my craft.
STEP 1
: Making of earth- top part of bonnet
Like any other paper mache work, I took a balloon and covered it with the piece of news papers. I covered at least 4 layers of news paper.
TIP: let the first layer dry completely before putting the next layer of newspaper or tissues or if you are really impatient like me, use the hair dryer instead. The base and the balloon was like this in the picture below:
STEP: 2
- Plan was to show the two face of earth, half is greener, for that we chose original colour which is blue.
- And other half is dry, for that I chose black colour, you can choose any colour.
- Give some detailing . I chose to decorate with green duct tape and white paper.
- For the face ( eyes and mouth) I chose normal 2d drawings on simple paper
- Stick all your details on earth.
STEP 3:
Green detailing of the hat base- Time to use your imagination here, I Covered the base with twigs for the green side of earth, tried to show the natural part of the earth, the pond, little animals.eggs, flowers, green grass and so on.
STEP 4:
- The dry part of the earth
- I chose to cover my base with the brown packing paper
- Lots of 2d paper printouts of industrialisation, pollution, environmental effect etc. It was more over a sticking work only.
- All the work was covered with dry twigs instead of green grass.
After finishing both the sides the look was like below in the picture:
it was clearly showing the two sides of earth, green side and dry land.
STEP 5
- For that I made a giant bunny on a4 cardboard sheets .
- Covered it with the cotton and gave him lil detailings.
- Outlined with some sketch colour
STEP 6
- Now this awesome bunny is going to hold the earth.
- Just stick at the back side of the earth.
- Message written on the back side on a paper.
Finally , here is the my first ever attempt of Easter hat cum bonnet. With lots of detailing and hard work it came out really well. The best thing was, that my little one liked it a lot and won the first prize .
