Since I am, after all, Miranda Sparkle, I get a lot of kidding about my first name. "Will you give me my Miranda Rights?" I'm asked. Or, "Where is your fruit hat?"
Well, several weeks ago an amiable acquaintance and I were joking about Carmen Miranda of the fruity hats, and I rashly said the next time we got together, I would wear a Carmen Miranda hat.
I thought, how difficult can it be to throw one together? Answer to this question is ALWAYS: very.
There are lots of instructions on the web, most of them saying:
Take an old cap, cut off the bill, and use this as the base. Cover it, and glue plastic fruit on top. Yeah, sure. Just like that. Most caps don't cover remotely enough of my rather capacious cranium. And to glue fruit on, you need a more stable substrate, to use an annoying pretentious word that has spread like wildfire in the craft and mixed media world.
I ended up putting my fruit (from the dollar store, including a "pineapple" made out of a fake gourd with green paper fronds taped on, and a summer squash striped to look a little like a banana) into a small straw basket with crumpled paper mounded in the botton, glued everything up the wazoo with E-4000 (or is it 6000?), used sparkle pipecleaners to attach the basket to a knitted ski cap, and then wrapped the cap (while I was wearing it) with inexpensive shiny bright orange fabric. I had some sparkled plastic berries which looked a little like green grapes, and some cheesy gold fabric poinsettias, as well as a pseudo Hawaiian lei whose origins are shrouded in the mists of time, I got it so long ago. I used them as camouflage at strategic spots, and presto! I was ready to samba.
The next time I saw this friend was yesterday, at - gulp! - a group gathering. Many of the people were meeting me for the first time, and there I was in this bizarro getup. I wore the hat the absolute minimum amount of time, but I have a feeling quite a few people were under the impression - perhaps correctly - that I was a bit wacko.
Next challenge from my friend, by the way, is to come up with some way to mark Ground Hog Day.
Be afraid; be very afraid . . .
There are lots of instructions on the web, most of them saying:
Take an old cap, cut off the bill, and use this as the base. Cover it, and glue plastic fruit on top. Yeah, sure. Just like that. Most caps don't cover remotely enough of my rather capacious cranium. And to glue fruit on, you need a more stable substrate, to use an annoying pretentious word that has spread like wildfire in the craft and mixed media world.
I ended up putting my fruit (from the dollar store, including a "pineapple" made out of a fake gourd with green paper fronds taped on, and a summer squash striped to look a little like a banana) into a small straw basket with crumpled paper mounded in the botton, glued everything up the wazoo with E-4000 (or is it 6000?), used sparkle pipecleaners to attach the basket to a knitted ski cap, and then wrapped the cap (while I was wearing it) with inexpensive shiny bright orange fabric. I had some sparkled plastic berries which looked a little like green grapes, and some cheesy gold fabric poinsettias, as well as a pseudo Hawaiian lei whose origins are shrouded in the mists of time, I got it so long ago. I used them as camouflage at strategic spots, and presto! I was ready to samba.
The next time I saw this friend was yesterday, at - gulp! - a group gathering. Many of the people were meeting me for the first time, and there I was in this bizarro getup. I wore the hat the absolute minimum amount of time, but I have a feeling quite a few people were under the impression - perhaps correctly - that I was a bit wacko.
Next challenge from my friend, by the way, is to come up with some way to mark Ground Hog Day.
Be afraid; be very afraid . . .
