A Month of Spookdays: Death Rides A Bowler

I had this 25-cent bowler I picked up at a garage sale. I swore I wasn’t going to paint it. I wasn’t going to turn a 2-hour project into a 2-day project. Yeah, that worked out. I used:

Bowler (garage sale)
Skulls (dollar store)
Death figure (part of my Secret Pumpkin gift)
Flowers (garage sale)
Ribbon (Michael’s, $3.99)
Purple garland (stash)
A bunch of acrylic paint

I started by gathering possibilities, and narrowing them down.

See those flower things there? Totally on the first iteration of the bowler. The one without paint.

I thought the wonderful Death figure would look great riding on my bowler. He’s a little heavy, but it still works. I added in skulls, a silky band from the same garage sale as the bowler, and some purple garland from my stash. I finished it. I took pictures. I hated it. I pried off everything but Death and the skulls, taped up Death’s legs, and started painting.

Unsurprisingly, I had to go over everything several times to get much vibrancy against the black velvet of the hat.

Bit by bit, the hat is painted in white, orange, purple, and a touch of green. I especially love the green on the skulls.

That purple stuff gets glued on again, and a new hatband is attached. I actually purchased this ribbon, when nothing in my stash proved satisfactory. That’s right, I spent actual money on this.

Said ribbon got some Fray Check on the ends as a finishing touch.

Lastly, from the same box as the Makit-Bakit crystals came a bunch of silk flowers mounted on stick pens. Off they came, to be attached to my hat. And it is festive indeed.