Mad Hatter Headband 

• Headband

• Paper Cup

• Sheet of A4 paper

• Pencil

• Scissors

• Sheet of A4 thin colored card

• Scissors

• Glue gun

• Ribbon

The first part is to make a template for you colored card to cover your paper cup. You could skip this step if you plan on painting the cup to color it instead of covering it with card.

Wrap the piece of paper around your paper cup so it is tight at the top and the bottom, and the whole cup is covered. Using a pencil draw around the rim of the paper cup and the bottom to give you a rough outline. Un roll the paper and cut out following the pencil lines you have just made. It’s a good idea to leave a little extra paper at the bottom, that way you can push it around the bottom of the cup when you have the rim lined up so you get an accurate line to cut. Wrap the template around your cup and cut a straight line on the visible edge.

Wrap a piece of paper tightly around your paper cup.

Draw around the rim and base of the paper cup onto the paper for guidelines to create a template

Draw a straight line down the visible edge of the template, and then cut it

Once you have your template, the rest is easy. Draw around the template on to the sheet of colored card, and also draw round the top of the cup twice. Cut out the three shapes.

Isla drawing around the template onto the sheet of colored card

Cut out all three shapes

Using a glue gun, place a bead of glue along the top edge of your larger card template, and wrap around the paper cup attaching it securely to the rim, making sure it is also fairly tight at the base of the cup. Finish by placing a bead of glue down the free straight edge of the card.

Place a bead of glue at the top of the card shape and wrap tightly around the paper cup, securing it at the rim

Place a bead of glue around the rim of the paper up and secure one of the circles of card. Do the same at the bottom of the cup sticking it to the other circle of colored card.

Place a bead of glue on around the rim of the cup to secure the top of the hat

Glue the hat to the base with another bead of glue from a hot glue gun

You can then decorate your little top hat exactly how you wish. As we were sticking to the original Disney film we simply added our price tag that I printed off of the computer, and some ribbon at the base, using glue to hold them in place.

The finished Mad Hatter Hat

Our headbands were a little on the thin side, so to attach the hat to the headband securely I glued a small piece of ribbon to the base, then used more glue and wrapped the ribbon around the headband. If you have wider headbands you could probably get away with gluing the hat straight onto the band.

That’s it. Simple but effective. We made several different color ways for Isla’s friends, and I think they all look really cute.

Although we were making a Mad Hatter Headband, you could use the technique to make any style of top hat headband. If I had thought of the idea last year, maybe I would have done some for Oliver’s magic party that he had!