CRAFT: "Lady in Hat" Pin

Bits and Scraps become a lovely pin

The thing I love about this home crafted pin is that it took very little time to make and cost next to nothing...I could have used a little more "expensive" technique, but this was just an experiment.   
I am always looking at things around the house to see if they can be repurposed to something else.  If you break this piece down to it's parts, this is what you need:

• A plastic base...by using the side of a pink plastic bottle, I cut out the shape and made good use of the curve already in the plastic.  Why pay for plastic blanks when you can use plastic bottles to make the base for bracelets, pins, hair ornaments, magnets, etc.?

• decorative netting...I had found an old hat at the thrift store that was pretty far gone, but it had this netting, and some great feathers, that I rescued for art projects.

• feathers...again, these were rescued from the old hat, and there were quite a few.

• image of lady in hat...this was the most fun part of the pin.  I had gone to a swap meet and found an old catalog...it wasn't even complete!  It had many interesting (mostly) black and white images; very few in color.  I already knew how to easily "colorize" the images the way I wanted them...all I had to do was to photocopy them on some heavy paper and use watercolor pencils to color them.  I added the circular highlights on my own.  If you are a talented artist, you could draw your own image.  You can also take advantage of the many copyright free image books and discs available, like those from DOVER BOOKS. (check out the free samples subscription on the left hand side of the page!) I buy those from thrift stores and used bookstores as well.  [IMPORTANT COPYRIGHT NOTE:  I did have to pay to do a search at the copyright office to make sure they were copyright free, which they now were. The copyright had expired.  That wasn't exactly cheap...but since they were no longer under copyright protection, I was free to use them as I wished--and there were quite a few.]  After I had colored the lady in the hat with the water color pencils, and used water to enhance the color, I let it dry.  

• paper backing...if I were doing this over, I would use some type of cloth and sew the pin back to the cloth first, before gluing.

• pin back...since I prefer stick pins, I probably would have used a stick pin instead, but as I said, this was just an experiment.  I attached it with a bit of hot glue)

• Elmer's or Aleen's Glue...there are many really nice glues to try...this was just several coats of plain old white glue. 

Using the plastic blank I had cut from the pink plastic bottle, I took the netting and cut a piece that would fit over the blank, and used glue overall.  After that dried, I applied the feathers.  Apply several coats of glue to the colorized image.  Affix the image (after it is dried and trimmed of any excess dried glue) over the feathers.  Glue the paper (or cloth backing) to the back, and hot glue (or sew) the pinback.  So, keep your eyes open...look at those plastic bottles before you toss them!