Having been on a short-notice trip to York races on Saturday, it's fair to say I had a little bit of a nightmare when it came to finding a fascinator. Unfortunately my budget did not stretch to the £18 ones in Debenhams and M&S, and it seemed a bit silly in comparison to the price of my dress and shoes. Then there was the task of finding a fascinator that matched my outfit and one that I actually wanted to wear. So I decided to take on a bit of a DIY project. Initially I managed to find a feather clip from Dorothy Perkins in the sale for £2, then purchased some gold ribbon and a detailed button to glue onto it for £1.20. However I forgot to pack these and had to start all over again in Leeds.
This is what my finished fascinator looked like:
 |
| [When it's on the feathers spread out more so it looks more like proper headwear rather than a clip, and it's also more cream than the pink the lighting has made it look like] |
|
And it cost a fraction of the ones in the shop (effectively £4 in total, not counting the price of the glue gun - I got mine for around £6 in Wilkinson's and am treating it as a very worthwhile investment given the fact that I've used it twice since. You can also find them in places like B&Q or any good craft store).
To make your DIY fascinator, you will need:
- a pair of scissors
- a glue gun
- a mat or towel to protect any surfaces
- a clip or grip
- feathers
- anything else you want to add as decoration (buttons, ribbons, jewels, sequins, glitter, I almost bought a pair of earrings in the sale because of the jewelled pattern!)
For my fascinator, I got the gold clip for £4.99 for two from H&M, and then found a broken feather clip for £2 in the sale at New Look so I could rob it of its feathers.
To make my fascinator, I did the following:
1. Made sure the work surface was properly covered (I can't stress this enough - you don't want a glue and feather concoction destroying your carpet), got out everything I needed and turned the glue gun on to heat up, which takes 5 minutes.
2. In the meantime, I took apart the New Look clip for the feathers by pulling everything back and cutting as close to the bottom of the feathers as possible, cutting them from the clip one by one.
3. Arranged them all on the clip to see which arrangement worked the best, then lined them up in 3 rows for each layer.
4. Glued in sections at the back of the clip, tucking each feather in behind the grips and allowing it to dry before adding more.
5. After waiting a few minutes for all the glue to set properly (it sets very quickly), I then pulled off all the stringy bits of glue, and the clip was ready to wear!
Unfortunately there aren't any pictures of the DIY process as I decided to make it on the morning of the races - you could say I'm a last-minute kind of girl - so there wasn't a great deal of time. But it's good to know that if you have all the materials, you can easily make this in half an hour and you only have to wait a matter of minutes for it to set and it's ready to wear!
I hope this helps with any headwear dilemmas anyone might be having in the run up to races, weddings or fancy summer events!
.jpg)
.jpg)