DIY Holiday Hats For Every Occasion

All you need to make a party hat for any occasion is a paper plate and a pair of scissors!

Really, that’s all you need, no glue or extra bits of anything. These simple little hats can be decorated by kids at a party, or used to play party games. The bigger the plate or the smaller the child’s head, the bigger the brim on your hat is going to be. Below is a picture showing how to make the cuts for the shamrock hat ready for St. Patrick’s Day. The first step here is the same for any of the hat designs. Just fold the plate in half and cut the hole for the head (remember to leave a little part where the center design is still attached to the brim.) It’s best to guess the hole size a little on the small side, because if it doesn’t fit then you can always trim the hole a bit bigger.

 

Once you have the first cut made, you can then decide what you want your hat decoration to be. In this case the shamrock is symmetrical, so keeping the plate folded in half makes it easy to cut the shamrock leaf symmetrically. Once you’re done, open it up and decorate it any way you like. At this point I like to hand the cut out plates over to my crack squad of paint and glitter commandos.

Next you can see the heart version of the hat. This one is even easier to cut out than the shamrock hat.

 

It works fine with just a colored paper plate.

Or if you have plain white plates you could paint them.

I really like the simple circle cut out on pastel colored plates and made to look like sweetheart candy with a marker pen. So quick to make, but very cute.

As you can see, these can be made to fit any head. Even my six month old can rock them!

There are an infinite number of ways you can customize the basic design, so I’ve included a few photos and a pdf design sheet that you can print out to use for ideas.

Here are the designs for the different hats.

Of course there’s the classic paper plate crown that can easily be used for birthdays, dress up play or mardi gras.

With a couple of extra folds and two staples you can make a spooky bat hat.

March Hare ears for Easter?

Fourth of July party hats with silver markers and stickers!

The options for these kinds of hats are only limited by your imagination and with kids in the home, there’s no shortage of that!

If you’re having a party, these hats can be used for a couple of interesting games.

Number shuffle.
Divide the kids into two teams (this works best if you have a minimum of five players in each team) Make the basic circle paper plate hats in advance and number them for however many people are in each team. Put the plate hats on the kid’s heads so that they cannot see their own number. Then it’s a race to see which team can line themselves up in numerical order, the only rule being that you can’t tell anyone what their number is, just whose number is greater or smaller than theirs.

Guess Who.
This game used to be with stickers on your forehead, but when you use these hats, you can not only write the name on the circle, but you can also stick a picture of the person on it for kids that cannot yet read. Each person wears a hat with the name and picture of a character/real person on the front that they cannot see. Everyone else can see who they are though. Each person gets to ask “yes/no answer” questions to the group to try and guess who they are, such as “Am I fictional?” or “Am I human?” etc. If the answer to your question is yes then you get to ask another question. If the answer to your question is no then it is the next person’s turn to start asking their questions. The winner is the first person to correctly guess their secret identity.

Hope you have fun coming up with new paper plate millinery. The quickest, easiest and most adaptable party hat for every event in the year!

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