Hat making party

Sunday I went to a Mardi Gras hat making party.  A group of seven friends are going to Mardi Gras. Besides having fun, their mission is to collect beads to recycle on local parade routes later in the year. Why not? Beads are expensive and they'd be buying them themselves otherwise.

On the Monday after Christmas Mic and I went to see Little Fockers and have dinner at Olive Garden. After that we shopped at Michaels craft store and found a selection of Christmas decorations on 70% clearance or so.  Mic saw some items in purple, gold, and green and thought it would be fun to decorate hats for the next Mardi Gras trip.

I made a sketch of the hat that I worked on. This is what it looks like, as best as I can remember and within the limits of what I can illustrate in markers without drawing everything out in great detail first.

ETA: there are two gold apples, one gold ball, three purple balls, several purple feathery shaped items, green glittered balls on green glittered wire, two gold beaded strands of round gold sequins, small purple balls on purple wire, a green ribbon band, and a green bird sitting on purple leaves and foliage. All of this is mostly wired and to a lesser extent hot glued to a straw colored cowboy hat. It may be missing some features in the real version, but this is mostly the gist of it. The drawing reminds me how out of practice I am in drawing lately. I suppose no illustration would have the impact and immediacy of the real thing.

I thought maybe that would add some perspective, but adding a drawn hat to a photo doesn't really bring it to life so much. Oh well!