One of our favorite spring crafts for kids is making giant paper mache hats! The kids have so much fun creating their own hats from butcher paper and wearing them around all spring!
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I thought it would be fun to welcome spring with one of my favorite spring crafts for kids~ giant paper spring hats! This has been a favorite art project over the years to do with my students, and now I’m enjoying doing it at home with my kids. (This post contains affiliate links. )
Spring Crafts for Kids: Paper Mache Hats
In the past I’ve done these hats many different ways. This project really lends itself to so many creative options. For this particular project, I’m using giant sheets of butcher paper as the main component to the hat. However, I have done it over the years with giant sheets of wrapping paper or sheets of newspaper (later painted when dry). They all work wonderfully!
Materials for Spring Hats
- Giant sheet of butcher paper (or wrapping paper)
- Bowl and paintbrush
- Liquid glue and water
- Masking tape
- Newspaper for stuffing
- Tissue paper or other materials to decorate your hat
Directions for Making Spring Hats
1. Cut your butcher paper into a large circle.
2. Prepare your paper mache mixture of glue and water. (I used about a 1:1 ratio.)
3. Paint the top of your large circle with the mixture.
4. Now it’s time to shape the hat to your child’s head. First, place a DRY sheet of newspaper on top of your child’s head (to protect him or her from getting covered with gluey water.) Then place the wet butcher paper circle on top of the dry newspaper. Gently press the paper around his/her head and wrap a few times with masking tape to hold in place. (The kids always think this part is super fun!)
5. Gently take the hat off, and place it somewhere to dry. I take the newspaper and crumple it up into a ball and stuff it inside the head area to help it keep its shape while drying. Also be sure to play around with the outer part of the hat and get it shaped just the way you want it to dry.
6. Once the hat is dry it’s time to decorate it! Gently pull off the masking tape. Once your hat is dry the tape is no longer necessary to hold the hat’s shape.
7. Decorate your hat any way you want! We did one with tissue paper squares.
How to Make Tissue Paper Flowers
We decorated the other hat with tissue paper flowers!
Cut out two circles from tissue paper.
Place a small dot of glue in the center of circle.
Glue the circles together.
Fold and press the paper together until you like how your flower looks! (It’s really fun to play around with different sizes and colors of circles.)
Tips
- After the hat dries you can add another layer of paper mache and let dry before decorating. This will make it even more sturdy.
- I leave the stuffed newspaper inside while the kids are decorating the hat. This helps protect it from accidental crushing.
- If you are doing this as a class project, it would probably work best doing it small group. I used to always do it in small groups, and it was even better when I had parent volunteers to assist!
Happy Spring!
Oh my word, these are beyond cute! Thanks for sharing these paper mache hats. 🙂
Mary Catherine of Fun-A-Day!
I love the hats!!!! You need to do this with Ella! Beautiful accent flowers! Seems easier than the newspaper strips and balloon we’ve used in the past!
How long does it typically take to dry?
We left ours in the direct sun to dry for only about an hour, but if you don’t have direct sun, it would probably be safest to let it dry overnight.
OH this is too cute! I love it. Please consider sharing this at Look What We Did. I just adore this and cannot wait to try it with my 7 year old. -Savannah http://hammocktracks.com/buttons/
Oh my those came out amazing! So beautiful! Thanks for sharing on We Made That!
I featured these hats today with a post I made that included 6 spring poems with crafts. I hope it generates a lot of traffic to your blog. I just adore these.
Thank you so much! I’m trying to bring more poetry into our days here so I’ll have to share them with my children. So appreciative of you sharing our spring hats!
wow they are lovely. I adore the flowers.
What a great hat. My school has an Easter hat parade later this week. I wonder if any will be as pretty as yours.
How fun! I can hear the Irving Berlin song, in the background as I look at this post, “In your Easter bonnet….” Great pictures.
I believe I see these in our Derby Day future.
Too fun.
Perfect! We’re going to make these for our Easter Parade. What a unique idea! My daughter will love it.
What fun! These hats are beautiful. I love art that is functional/semi-functional. The color choices are stunning as well.
Thank you, Amy~ The kids LOVE running around in them!
Very cute idea. We have a link party called Wednesdays Adorned From Above Blog Hop and would love to have you share this and any other posts with everyone. It runs from Tuesday night through midnight Sunday. We also have a $50.00 Visa Gift Card Giveaway. Here is the link to the party.
http://www.adornedfromabove.com/2013/03/wednesdays-adorned-from-above-blog-hop_19.html
We hope to see you there.
Debi and Charly @ Adorned From Above
Adorable hats! Thanks for sharing at Mom’s Library!
These are such fun! When I taught, we made them every spring! You can use liquid starch instead of paper mache. We also used two sheets of paper; generally gift wrap on top and butcher paper underneath. These hats will last forever!
These are wonderful, Chelsey! I have a friend with four girls and will definitely share this link with her!
Thank you, June! They are so fun to make and to wear!
Gorgeous! I’m featuring this on The Sunday Showcase this week!
Thank you for the feature!
Such a cute idea. We might be a bit late for Easter, but my girl loves to accessorize! I’m sure we’ll make these soon!
Thanks! They were really fun to make, and we loved coming up with ideas to decorate them. Please share yours if you happen to make them!
I will be proud myself to wear such vibrant and cute hats like these. I will surely make some for my grandchildren.
Oh my. My daughter will love this!
Oh my! These are darling! I have 3 little girls who would so love to do this! They really turned out great, love all the pretty pictures.
Love the pictures in this tutorial! Your daughter is a very patient model 🙂 Thanks for sharing with After School Link Up!
I love how these are made, so fun! I’ll be sharing this on The Crafty Crow soon!
This is seriously amazing, it is cute, creative and crafty!
Thank you for stopping by the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop this week. We hope to see you drop by our neck of the woods next week!
I just love these, Chelsey!
About how big of a circle of paper would you think would be good for an adult sized hat?
If you have a roll of butcher paper at school, I would use the entire width as the diameter of the circle for the hat. Or use a full sheet of newspaper. Have fun! I’d love to see the results! 🙂
Perfect! Thanks! We are making them for our Mother’s Day tea party!