Marching Band Ornaments

Normally, I only blog about projects that involve rubber stamping, but today, I thought I'd share with you what has been taking up all my time and keeping me from my stamping.

My kids were both in marching band all through high school, and when they went off to college, they joined their universities' marching bands. Band has been a huge part of our lives for the last 10 (?) years, from Jr. High all the way through. (Although, they both decided not to continue this fall, and it has probably been harder on me than them!)

We also give the kids a special ornament each year that ties into something they'd been doing or that they really liked that year. So, when my kids were in high school, I wanted to give them marching band ornaments. They had other musical instrument ornaments from previous years, but since they were both in high school marching band, I wanted something that was specifically related to marching. I searched and searched and came up completely empty handed.

Not one to be easily daunted once I have an idea in my head, I decided that I was just going to have to make them something. 

So with a little trial and error and a fair bit of time and fussy work, I came up with these miniature shakos (the fancy name for a marching band hat). They matched their school's uniforms, including the gray one for my daughter's drum major uniform. I was pretty happy with how they'd turned out. 

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. A parent on my daughter's university's band parent page was looking for someone that could make marching band ornaments since she, like me, had been unable to find any. Suddenly, I has a chorus of other parents requesting ornaments as well. I made these to match their uniforms and sent them off to the dozen or so parents who had ordered them.

One parent posted a photo of her ornament when it arrived on the same band parent Facebook page, and suddenly I had orders pouring in for more. My stamp studio has turned into a miniature hat factory, but I'm hoping to push aside the paint and the fluffy plume material and get a little stamping done one of these days.