There are only 4 days until “The Most Exciting Two Minutes in Sports” and you don’t have a derby hat?!?! Fair enough, as they can cost an arm and a leg, especially one for a large and in charge version. Have no fear! My friend Selena and I got together to make one for her upcoming derby party she’s attending. Full of feathers, ribbon, and flowers, this hat has everything sans the huge price tag. Check out the our full how-to after the jump – allons-y!

What You’ll Need:

• wide brimmed hat
• a tall bottle (you can put the hat on it to work)
• wire cutters
• hot glue gun and glue sticks
• faux flowers in different sizes
• wire rimmed rbbon
• feathers in different sizes
• scissors
• small jeweled buttons (optional)
• a piece of tape

While the glue gun heats up, remove the stems from the faux flowers and set aside. Use tape to mark the front of the hat

Since the ribbon we used was sheer, we doubled it and glued it to the hat. Here’s where the wire-rimmed ribbon comes into play – you can pull the wire ends to make sure it sits flat against the hat and won’t have a gap

Glue the largest flower to the hat at the top of the ribbon, if you glue it closer to the brim, it will create a dip that will make the brim constantly in your face (to make sure the hat has a bit of pop in the sunlight, we glued the jeweled buttons into the blue flowers)

With smaller feathers, remove the lighter, fluffier parts leaving the flatter pieces. To shape them, run your thumbnail along the stem creating indentations. The closer they are, the more it will curve

Curve the larger feathers as well and glue them to the hat making sure to leave space for the other elements we are going to add

We cut the discarded stems into smaller pieces and glued the smaller feathers to them. You can glue them directly on the hat, but we wanted them to have a bit more depth

Add in smaller faux flowers making sure they are where you want them to be first and glue into place

Using left over pieces of ribbon we created loops twisting the wires and glued them into gaps

For the finishing touches we added smaller, fluffier feathers to create accents

And there she is! The derby queen! Grab your mint juleps, place your bets and rock out your hats in style!