Mad Hatter: Pleated Paper Party Hats

My daughter (my lil preschool clown, soon to be a kinderclown) and I participated in a Mommy and Me Mad Hatter Tea Party for preschoolies with Autism last year. Theses wearable craft hats were a great, easy sensory/fine motor activity that presented the kids with visually and texturally stimulating "take homes" that required no glue, paint or mess-- meaning less tactile discomfort for the kids and less clean up for the host. Moms and kids just loved theses!

Imagine it in a million colors, wide ribbon sashes, feathers, flowers... We also made cards that said '10/6' to tuck in the sash. The tuck card is a little thing, but it takes this craft from "oh, a hat" to "Oh! A Mad Hatter!"

Click Here for the full tuitorial with lots of detailed photos. Thanks Ecouterre!

TOP FORM

Add a dash of festivity to the work grind by cobbling together a jaunt top hat from waste office paper. The origami technique uses up every last scrap, and the pleated construction expands and contracts to fit any size head.

STEP ONE

You will need two pieces of scrap A3 papers. The hats are one-size-fits-all, but if you require an extra-large hat, an additional half a sheet of A4 is needed. Tools required are: knife for scoring, ruler, double-sided sticky tape, thick sticky tape, and glue.

STEP TWO

On one A3 sheet, score the blue lines as shown. The 60mm wedge will be the brim of the hat, while the 100mm wedge will be the crown.

STEP THREE

Score the red lines as shown. These will form the guidelines for pleating.

STEP FOUR

Pleat along the score lines.

STEP FIVE

This is the most difficult step. Carefully fold down the 60mm wedge, and in the process, pleat the score lines in that wedge in an opposite direction to how you pleated them in step 4.

STEP SIX

Make sure step 5 was performed so that the brim (the 60mm wedge) was fold down 90 degrees to the side band (the 137mm center wedge).

STEP SEVEN

Similar to steps 5 and 6, fold the crown (the 100mm wedge) upwards 90 degrees to the side band.

STEP EIGHT

Repeat steps 2 to 7 on another A3 sheet, then join these two sheets together using double-sided sticky tape.

STEP NINE

Curl the entire piece into the shape of a hat. Connect the ends with double-sided sticky tape.

STEP TEN

Stabilize the inside of the crown with a piece of thick sticky tape, then reinforce the outside with a bit of glue in the center hole. To make each hat unique, we decorated them with origami cranes, lilies, roses, paper planes, and even ninja stars!
+ ClarkeHopkinsClarke
+ Zenith Interiors