Patriotic Hat

The Cricut Circle blog challenge this week is to create something with at least three stars and stripes on it. I decided to use this challenge to create some 4th of July decor. This is also the first time I have used the Cricut Craft Room. I got the Independence Day 3D Projects digital cartridge because I wanted to create the large Uncle Sam hat and make that into a table centerpiece. I cut the hat at 5." The blue and red papers for this project are from the Summer Celebration Stack by DCWV. They are both shimmery. The white cardstock was just in my stash. I pieced the hat together and hot glued a styrofoam ball inside to give it some stability and as a place to stick in my embellishments. I cut out the fireworks from the Stand and Salute cartridge at 3." I cut each firework twice, once on flip, then glued them together around a piece of floral stem wire. I cut three white and two red fireworks. I covered all the white fireworks in star dust Stickles and the red fireworks in x-mas red Stickles. The four small blue stars are the cuts leftover from the hat, there were eight in all, but I glued two around each wire. The large blue star in the middle is cut from Stand and Salute at 2." Again, I cut it twice and glued it around the wire. I used Phrases to cut both the flag (it is the tag feature) and the "4th of July" phrase. The flag is cut at 3" and the phrase at 2 1/4." I popped up the "July" part of the phrase with some foam tape, then covered the white parts of the phrase in star dust Stickles and the red part in x-mas red Stickles. I used a dark blue marker to create some faux stitching around the edge of my flag. I did this twice, so each side of the flag is the same since this is a 3D project and will be seen from all sides. I then glued each flag around another piece of floral stem wire. I stuck each piece through the hat and into the styrofoam ball and added a little glue around the opening where it goes into the hat. It wasn't all the difficult to create, it just took a little while for all those Stickles to dry! I think it looks pretty awesome and I hope you do too! :) Enjoy!!

I also made this for the following challenges:

• BBTB2: patriotic
• My Sheri Crafts: red, white, and blue
• Scrappy Moms Stamps: patriotic pride
• Stuck On U Sketches: flag