Happy 2009! The Christmas decor is finally down--whew! It took me three whole days and halfway through day two I was really hoping that the Clean-Up Fairy might make an appearance and spare me the rest. I persevered, and was rewarded with an empty house and a storage room where I can once again see the floor. Normally in January I put up my "winter" decor--glittery snowflakes, a gorgeous Wendy Addison glittery Winter banner, etc. but for right now I'm just enjoying the emptiness.
When I was in Utah over Christmas I visited a favorite antique mall and did a bit of shopping. I've read of other bloggers who buy vintage hats just to take apart for the old millinery flowers but I've never found a hat that was inexpensive enough to make that worthwhile--until this trip, when I found THE HAT. I should have taken a 'before' photo, but imagine a small net cap (6.5" diameter) absolutely
covered in every conceivable type of millinery flower. Now, I'll never be accused of being too subtle--I generally think a smidge over the top is just about right--but the woman who wore this cap must have looked ridiculous with such a concoction on her head! There's
over the top and then there's w
hoa, and this hat defintely fell into the latter category.
Lucky for me, I saw the swan under this ugly duckling of a chapeau! I bought it for the princely sum of $5 and just spent the last 3o minutes rescuing almost 40 millinery flower lovelies from the clutches of the most horrid glue I've yet to encounter. I have to wonder if this hat was a homemade affair, because I can't imagine any milliner worth her hatpins would abuse a bottle of glue and a pile of flowers in such a manner. After the first ripped flower I got wise and used my trusty heat gun to melt the glue so that I could pull the flowers apart from the hat and each other.
There's still quite a bit of that heinous glue stuck to the back of each flower but I'm optimistic that I can find ways to use them so the glue won't show. I'm love my little vintage flower garden and I'd like to thank the lady who, 50 years ago, put every flower she could get her hands on onto one hat. I'm much obliged to her!
Happy 2009! The Christmas decor is finally down--whew! It took me three whole days and halfway through day two I was really hoping that the Clean-Up Fairy might make an appearance and spare me the rest. I persevered, and was rewarded with an empty house and a storage room where I can once again see the floor. Normally in January I put up my "winter" decor--glittery snowflakes, a gorgeous Wendy Addison glittery Winter banner, etc. but for right now I'm just enjoying the emptiness.
When I was in Utah over Christmas I visited a favorite antique mall and did a bit of shopping. I've read of other bloggers who buy vintage hats just to take apart for the old millinery flowers but I've never found a hat that was inexpensive enough to make that worthwhile--until this trip, when I found THE HAT. I should have taken a 'before' photo, but imagine a small net cap (6.5" diameter) absolutely covered in every conceivable type of millinery flower. Now, I'll never be accused of being too subtle--I generally think a smidge over the top is just about right--but the woman who wore this cap must have looked ridiculous with such a concoction on her head! There's over the top and then there's whoa, and this hat defintely fell into the latter category.
Lucky for me, I saw the swan under this ugly duckling of a chapeau! I bought it for the princely sum of $5 and just spent the last 3o minutes rescuing almost 40 millinery flower lovelies from the clutches of the most horrid glue I've yet to encounter. I have to wonder if this hat was a homemade affair, because I can't imagine any milliner worth her hatpins would abuse a bottle of glue and a pile of flowers in such a manner. After the first ripped flower I got wise and used my trusty heat gun to melt the glue so that I could pull the flowers apart from the hat and each other.
There's still quite a bit of that heinous glue stuck to the back of each flower but I'm optimistic that I can find ways to use them so the glue won't show. I'm love my little vintage flower garden and I'd like to thank the lady who, 50 years ago, put every flower she could get her hands on onto one hat. I'm much obliged to her!
Ooooh, that is an amazing find! I never find THE hat to dismantle. What fun this will be for you to play with; all those yummy flowers. I imagine the lady who wore that over the top hat was name Myrtle Tompkins or something similar.
ReplyDeleteAs to the sandblasting, I have no idea what the original costs would been. It was under hubbie's domain after I had exhausted the auto body options. I can imagine it'd be more than $50, but hopefully less than $100. I might've changed my mind if it started inching up to the $100 range.
Looks like a flower shop exploded! What a great find, Heidi! Can't wait to see what fun you're gonna have with all those flowers! Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteOh my heavens what a GREAT find!!!!
ReplyDeletegorgeous flowers!!!! xo
ReplyDelete