Eyeballs Studio: Voodoo Hat

For the next Elf Fantasy Fair, my wife and me are making voodoo themed costumes. Here's a cool hat I made!

Materials:

Top hat
Clay
Ribbon
Acrylic paints and varnish
Hot glue gun
Chicken bones (more on that later)
Bleach
Vinegar
Feathers
Black yarn
Beads
Drill
Needle and black thread

Preparing the chicken bones
I used some real chicken bones, from chicken wings, on the hat. Of course, you don't want to make a greasy, smelly mess. After eating the wings, you're left with bones that still have pieces of meat, skin and fat on them. It's quite easy to clean them:

First, simmer for about an hour in water.
Clean off any pieces of skin and fat as much as possible (this will come off easily).
Simmer for another hour to get the last bit of fat out of the bones.
Put them in a plastic container, cover with bleach and let it stand overnight.
Rinse thoroughly with water.
Rinse a few times with vinegar to neutralize the bleach and immediately rinse with water.
Let them dry a few days and apply a coat of varnish.

That's all there is to it. Very important: after rinsing with vinegar, immediately rinse them with water, or the vinegar will dissolve the bones. I had this happening the first time I tried this. The worst part? I have a degree in chemistry, so I should have known this would happen!

Sculpting the skull
There's a bird skull on the front of the hat. This isn't a real skull, though. I sculpted one out of air drying modeling clay, with a picture of a raven skull as reference.

After it had dried, I painted it using very thin washes of ochre and burnt umber to give it the appearance of an old skull. Finally, a coat of varnish.

The Ace of Spades
There's also a playing card on the hat. A plain, boring card wouldn't really do it. There should at least be a skull on it, and it needed to look old and weathered. I searched for some clip art of (of course) an ace of spades and printed it using a laser printer. It's very important to use a laser printer, because the paper will be painted, and inkjet ink would run.
I printed out several sizes and then picked one that was the right one for my hat. To make it look old, I crumpled the paper a bit and then applied a wash of ochre paint. I let it soak in for a few minutes and then rinsed most of it off. This darkens the wrinkles in the paper.

After it had dried a bit, I darkened the edges a bit with burnt umber. I let it dry completely and then glued it on a piece of cardboard. A few coats of glossy varnish turned it into a real playing card.

Making dreadlocks
I didn't want to wear a wig underneath the hat, so I decided to attach some dreadlocks directly to the hat. I experimented a bit with several methods for creating simple and cheap dreads, and here's what I came up with.
I took some cheap black yarn and looped it a few times around a doorknob, so I had a bundle of about six threads. Next, I clamped it in my drill and spun it until it was wound up quite thight. I then folded it in half and carefully let it unwind again.

I put a couple of knots in it every 30 centimeters, so it wouldn't unravel, and cut it into pieces. At this point, it still looks like a rope made of yarn. To give it a more dreadlock-like appearance, I used a cat grooming brush to comb the dreads.

Putting the hat together
The hat itself is a cheap top hat I bought at a costume store a few years ago. It had a black ribbon around it, this had to removed first. It was glued on, and it wasn't easy to remove all glue residue, but using a sharp knife I managed to scrape everything off.
I put a red ribbon around the hat, put in place using a hot glue gun. I also made a bow using the same ribbon, and glued the bird skull and chicken bones in place.

The playing card was bent a bit, to match the contours of the hat as much as possible, stuck behind the ribbon and then secured in place using a few drops of hot glue.