The Bentley of All Church Hats: The Fully Rhinestoned Crown

The hats I make are a bit conservative; I'm just not one to add a lot of trim to my hats. Until I met Carole Boyd six years ago, I didn't think that I would ever consider rhinestoning a hat, but Carole's "crowns" were so lovely, I couldn't resist their beauty and workmanship.  You see, Carole's hats are works of art.  I'll introduce Carole and her crowns in an upcoming post, but I just had to show you this little hat she rhinestoned for me recently.

Now I'll make it clear that this is a doll hat.  I asked Carole to show me how she added  rhinestones to her hats.  So, I blocked a felt doll cloche and purchased some cheap but very impressive rhinestones for Carole's demonstration.  Carole uses Swarovski brand stones on her hats, costing hundreds of dollars to complete one hat.

For this post I took almost 100 images trying to capture the brilliance of my little hat under the sunlight.  I could'nt quite capture its brilliance until I darkened one of my out-of-focus images; that is what you see in the first image. Simply lovely!