This weekend I held my first fascinator party at a hen do. It was fantastic fun, both for me and for the hens.
I wanted to do something fairly quick but also following current trends. I wanted to do something to capture shape and form and not just to stick a ball of feathers onto a hair clip. I wanted to enable the hens to make something they were proud of and not something they could just pick up in any high street shop.
I settled on a combination of crin and sinamay with biot and coq feathers. I picked out two colour combinations which could be mixed and matched.
Crin is fantastic fun to work with. It's easy to sculpt into some really striking shapes yet always keeps to gentle curves which flatter the face and give a feminine touch. On seeing my demonstration, all the hens chose to make the base of their fascinator this way.
We used the sinamay and feathers to emphasise the shapes we'd made.
I was amazed at the variety of creations, with some uses of crin I'd never even dreamed of. I loved watching the characters of the hens reflected in their designs. There was big and bold, colourful and discrete, flowing shapes and controlled, tailored designs. But most of all there were fifteen smiles around the table.
The class was held in a beautiful cottage in Derbyshire. And without further ado here's some photos of what they produced. The hens are all planning to show off their masterpieces at the wedding in a few weeks so watch out for an update then.
If you are interested in holding a fascinator making party, please contact me on alison@alisonclaire.co.uk
