Making the hat was quite a task!
At first I wanted to make it out of plexiglass, but after visiting several plastic stores I thought that maybe vinyl would have been better and much easier to model.

[Click to enlarge]

But I wasn't convinced so I walked around the neighborhood to look at the junk that people throw away in the streets hoping I might find something interesting to use.

There was everything in the streets except for something useful for my hat. So I just picked up some ordinary cardboard to make the hat.

As you can see from the image, I started off with a milk bottle to keep the cardboard in place.
Then I found that a bucket could be much better for this, so I got a bucket and made a brim out of cardboard, adding (later) other cardboard on top of the bucket to make the top slightly bigger than the bottom.

Now that I had the shape the best thing to do to make it weatherproof but also children-proof would be to use the shape as a mold and work the fiberglass on it. So that is what I did. It took me a whole morning and the result wasn't too bad... except for... the size!


Only after making it and placing the hat on the dog did I realize it was far too big. It really didn't look proportioned so I decided to do it all over and it turned out pretty well.



The cardboard hat has been covered with fiberglass cloth.
[ click to enlarge ]
To harden the fiberglass cloth, I applied a few coats of fiberglass resin with hardener which made the material transparent. You can see through the fiberglass what is underneath: the cardboard hat and the masking tape to keep the pieces together.
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Before painting the hat, the fiberglass had to be sanded.
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Copyright © Colleen Corradi Brannigan