mobwife aesthetic — Art Beauty Creativity — DIY Home Improvements Carolyn's Blooming Creations (2024)

Carolyn J. Braden • 3 Minute Read

Every year I make a fascinator. I’ve been doing it for many, many years as I’m from the home of the Kentucky Derby, Louisville, Kentucky. While there are many ways to make Derby hats and fascinators, I’ve developed an easy way to create my own fascinator base that works for many styles. My bridal fascinator gets saved on my Pinterest account all the time. Read on to learn how to make my latest version, a glitter cowgirl fascinator.

If you don’t know what a fascinator is, it’s a head covering that is a bit smaller than a hat, but is worn on the head via a clip, headband or comb. I make most of my fascinators using a headband, as they stay on my head quite well. If they are on the heavy side, I will pin the headband to my head with a bobby pin.

You can also make fascinators with sinamay fabric, like I did in my Youtube tutorial below:

A fascinator that made history was when Princess Beatrice of York wore a very interesting fascinator to the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. It sold on eBay as an auction for charity for $131,560.00. Read more about the history of fascinators on the Vanity Fair website.

I think hats and fascinators are in my creative blood because I loved seeing them every year that I watched the Kentucky Derby with my grandma, my Nani. She loved watching the Derby horses while I fully enjoyed watching all the hats and the fashion of all the Derby go-ers. Forbes wrote a great article talking about the history of Derby hats and you can read it on their site by clicking here. The hats have many ties to British and French racing traditions.

While I love hats, they are usually a bit harder to make, as you need hat forms and many other tools to make a proper hat. A fascinator can be crafted quite easily from things you’d find at a craft store. Here’s how I made my glitter cowgirl fascinator using things I found on Amazon and at craft stores. I’ve included links to buy supplies on Amazon.

2—Next, I added a line of glue around the brim of the hat and used a wax tipped pencil to pick up iridescent tiny rhinestones and place them onto the glue.

3—I started with one line and kept gluing rhinestones until they covered the brim.

4—After the covered the brim, I started gluing them up the sides of the hat and kept going until the entire hat was covered in rhinestones.

5—The gluing of the rhinestones onto the hat is a very tedious process, but the overall finished look was exactly what I wanted. It took me weeks to complete, as I worked on other projects at the same time to give myself a break from it. I allowed it to dry for 24 hours before going onto the next step.

7—I placed the plain white felt on the bottom of my headband, then I added some hot glue and placed the glitter felt on top, basically “sandwiching” the headband between the two.

This created a nice circle base for the fascinator. See me create the base in my wedding fascinator tutorial in my YouTube video below or via my channel @carolynjbraden:

8—I then started adding the feathers. I added hot glue to the top of the base and started laying on the feathers one at a time. I then hot glued on a simple bow I made using the glitter tulle and then started gluing on the longer feathers. I added the rhinestone studded hat and kept adding more feathers.

I set my fascinator on a mannequin head base, which made the process of making it much easier.

9—I added enough feathers until I had it the way I wanted it to look. This project, as many of these types of creative projects, need a creative mindset, but whatever you end up creating, will be perfect because it’s your own.