Bunch Family

What wear to at your Royal Wedding watching party

Yes, hats are great, but sometimes you just want a little oomph without all that brim. We asked Stratford Shakespeare Festival costume designer Leslie Norgate for some tips on how to create our own fascinators. Here’s what she said:

You’ll need:

• paper plates, dessert size, preferably the inexpensive thin kind with a slightly rounded, wavy edge, in funky colours/patterns (the dollar store would be the ideal place to find these, and also many of the items listed below)
• hair barrettes, available at the drugstore or dollar store
• all manner of decorative elements, such as feathers (old hats can be a magnificent source for these), flowers, netting, veiling, buttons, castoff jewellery, ribbons, sequins, lace, felt, fabric. The sky is the limit
• scissors, glue gun, strong adhesive tape.

Steps:

• trim the paper plates with scissors to measure approximately 5 inches in diameter for adults, and 3 1/2 inches for children. You can do a fancy or irregular edge if you like – such as a bird’s wing or a daisy. If the colourful side of the plate is the concave side, pop it inside-out. It will be the outside of the fascinator
• attach a hair barette to the concave side of the plate using a very liberal application of tape (open the barette so you can easily tape over the back of it). You may wish to add a second barette for security. Make sure the tape is completely flattened so it does not catch in the hair
• decorate to your heart’s content. Make bows out of ribbon or strips of fabric, or gather into rosettes. Embellish with shiny buttons, rhinestones or sequins. Use glue gun to attach decorations. Let your bows and feathers spill beyond the edge of the plate. Periodically, hold the fascinator against your hair and check in a mirror to see how it looks. Use the barrette to clip the finished fascinator to the side of your head.

We felt we needed tea to help us along. Using Leslie’s instructions, we cut up some paper plates (We found it helpful to cut a slit halfway through a plate and make it into a cone) and started going nuts with the glue gun and ribbon. Experiment with shapes and please, please send us pictures of you in your creations! Happy fascinating.

For another easy fascinator with matching boutonniere, check out today’s Make it! post. (It has more feathers!)