I am a crafter that loves color, texture and original beautiful fabrics and jewelry.   I have been making things of all kinds for 30+ years.  

 

My husband and I country dance and I used to wear a hat and then I thought I was too old.  Well I started wearing them again and couple of years ago.  Fast forward to today’s world and hats are the in thing.  I love to wear different hats that coordinate with my outfits.  I have several hat shapes and colors, but I thought how boring to always have plain bands on your hats.  Then hat bars began to surface and I thought I can do something along those lines.  I believe that the hat is an extension of your fashion statement kinda like jewelry so why not make a statement piece for your hat and that is how Mel’s Band Candy was born.  

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I knit and crochet and love hand died yarn and yarns with sparkle and texture.  I had always wanted to weave, but didn’t have the room for a loom.  I went to a yarn walk this year and one of the vendors had made a small hand loom to use for making bracelets.  I bought one and thought I could use to make a hat band.  Well that didn’t exactly work, but my initiative husband modified it for me to be the size I needed to make a hat band and I was off to the races.

Then I wanted to expand and found faux leather and then on to cowhide and leather.  I love bling and feathers so all of my band have a piece that I call a slider because it actually can slide off of the band to allow you to wear different sliders for different looks or just wear the band.

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This is so fun to make these because it lets my imagination run wild with colors, textures and jewelry to accent them.  I go to estate sales to find vintage pieces to use on the sliders.  

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All of the bands are one of a kind.  I believe if you are purchasing directly from the maker of the piece you shouldn't  see it on many other people.  I do orders and will repeat color/theme but something will be different on the piece, the feathers or the jewelry embellishment so that is an original piece.

 

Thanks for visiting my site and viewing and hopefully purchasing some of my current creations which are my obsession these days.