Give Your Cowboy hat a Stylish Makeover with Embellishments
A cowboy hat is the perfect base for all kinds of embellishments and fun decorative touches! Traditionally, a simple band or rope is wrapped around the base of the hat, just above the brim, and is accented with a small buckle or tassel. But with a few DIY skills your cowboy hat doesn’t have to be that basic!
Get Rodeo Ready: Cowboy Chic
Whether you’re headed to a local rodeo, enjoying a night out at a country concert, or hitting up a fun honky tonk bar, an embellished cowboy hat will really bring your look together! Throw on a pair of jeans and some cowboy boots, top it off with a cool cowboy hat, and you’re ready to go!
Plus, your DIY skills don’t have to be constrained to just embellishing your own hat – give your cowboy’s hat a makeover while you’re at it!
How to Decorate a Cowboy Hat with Embellishments
Before starting on your cowboy hat embellishment project, think about what style or theme you want to achieve with your hat. This can be as toned-down or over-the-top as you like!
Below, you’ll find tutorials for making over a cowboy hat in 3 different styles: boho, glam, and romantic.
Regardless of the style you choose, here are the supplies you’ll need:
- A plain, basic cowboy hat
- Something to use as the “band” around the base of the hat
- Embellishments such as feathers, beads, fancy buttons, or rhinestones
- A hot glue gun and glue
Boho Cowboy Hat Makeover
The first step to decorating your cowboy hat is to gather your supplies. Choose a hat as your base – a tan suede hat or a straw hat are great choices for a boho look. Decide what kinds of embellishments you want to include on your hat. Some good options for a boho hat would be a leather strip or a few cuts of handkerchief fabric to use as a band around the hat, a beautiful turkey feather, some beads, faux flowers, or flower buttons.
Next, arrange your embellishments on the brim of your hat. It often helps to place all the decorations first to get an idea of what the finished product will look like before you glue anything down. Then you can rearrange everything as many times as you want until you love it!
Start by placing whatever you’ll be using as the band around the base of the hat, just above the brim. If you want a beaded strap, rather than a leather or fabric strap, string beads onto a piece of wire or fishing line, then wrap it around the base of the hat. Next, arrange the feathers, flowers, and buttons around the strap at the front and side of the hat.
Once you’re happy with the look of your hat, grab your hot glue gun and glue each element in place. Start by gluing the band in place, then the embellishments, working from the lowest layer of decorations outwards.
Glam Cowboy Hat Makeover
First, choose a hat to use as the base for your glam cowboy hat. A solid black or white hat will look great made over with some fashionable, glam embellishments!
Next, select your embellishments. For a glam hat, go for the sparkle! A sparkly strap, rhinestones, rhinestone trim, fancy jewel buttons, and fancy brooches are all great options.
Once you’ve gathered all of your supplies, arrange them on the hat. Try several different arrangements until you’re happy with the finished look. Try placing a sparkly strap around the base of the hat as the foundation of the design. Then, string dangly rhinestone trim all the way around the outer edge of the brim of the hat. Finally, place individual rhinestones, fancy buttons, and a brooch around the band and even extending upwards along the sides of the hat.
After you’ve laid out your design and are happy with the results, grab that hot glue gun and glue everything in place.
Romantic Girly Cowboy Hat Makeover
For a girly, romantic cowboy hat, you’ll want to start with a base hat that’s already got a bit of a girly vibe. If you can find a light pink cowboy hat – now is the time to use it! If you’re not having luck finding a pink hat, a white or light tan hat can also work well.
Now for the fun part – gathering up all your beautiful, romantic embellishments to really bring the look together. For a girly cowboy hat, you might try using ribbon, rhinestone trim, sequins, sequin trim, lace, faux flowers, or heart buttons.
Next, it’s time to lay out your design. Start with the base of the design – the strap around the base of the hat. Wrap a piece of ribbon or lace around the hat, just above the brim. Next, place rhinestone or sequin trim around the outer edge of the brim of the hat. Add individual rhinestones, sequins, buttons, and faux flowers around the base of the hat, focusing the design at either the front or one side of the hat.
Once you’re happy with the design, glue everything in place with your glue gun. Finally, if you want to add another romantic touch, glue some lace to the underside of the brim of the hat so that it peeks out from under the upturned sides of the brim.
