Pirate Hat Craft

This simple pirate hat craft project is just right for a kids dress-up costume or fancy dress party.

Quick & easy to make and suitable for all ages.

You could also print out the skull & crossbones to use as a colouring page.

I just managed to snap a photo before my boys ran off to make each other walk the plank!

How to make your own pirate hat...

Just follow these step by step instructions and you will have your very own home-made pirates hat in no time at all!

To make your kids crafts even easier scroll down the page for a printable version of the same instructions.

You will need:

Instructions:

1. Print out the skull and cross-bones flag onto plain white paper, and set to one side until you need it again in step 7.

2. Print out the pirate hat template onto plain card, then cut out the hat and the band shapes. These will be templates for you to draw around in step 3.

3. Place the templates onto your black card and draw around them carefully. A white or lead pencil should show up well enough for this.

4. Cut along your pencil lines to make the front of your pirate hat craft and the 2 bands that you will use hold it onto your head.

5. Glue the pieces of red card to the front of your hat along the top edge.

For younger children: Pre-school children making their pirate hat craft will do best with long rectangles of red card (approx 1cm x 4cm) stuck down with PVA glue. This will give them quicker results, so that they don't give up half-way through!

For older children: Children who are old enough to want a very neat result from their pirate crafts will probably like smaller mosaic style squares of card (approx 1cm x 1cm) to decorate their hats. They may also prefer to use a glue stick rather than PVA glue to stick the pieces down.

6.Once your kids have finished glueing, they will need to leave their decorated pirate hat to dry.

This is the ideal time to bring out the skull and cross-bones flag for them to colour in.

My little ones often need some encouragement (or distraction) when waiting for sticky glue to dry!

7. Explain to the kids that they need to colour inside the skulls eyes and mouth and then around the outside of the bones as well (to fill in the background of the flag).

Younger childen will probably do this best with a thick felt tipped pen.

Older kids might want to try a wax resist technique with a white crayon and watered down black paint.

8. Next, cut out the flag shape and stick it to the front of your pirate hat.

9. Finally, staple one of the black bands to each side of the hat and then wrap the whole thing around your childs head and measure where you need to staple the bands together. nb. take the pirate hat OFF your childs head before you add that last staple...please!

Click here for a printable version of these instructions.