Taylor Swift Broken Heart Visor : Eras Tour DIY Craft

Carolyn J. Braden • 5 Minute Read  

Taylor Swift Broken Heart Visor : Eras Tour DIY Craft

Behind the smile, there is sometimes great pain…..

As soon as I heard the Taylor Swift song “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart”, I knew I’d create something using it as inspiration. There are many times in my life when I have had to force myself to pull myself together to “perform” at life and I know others have done the same. The song is, in my opinion, a true anthem for finding strength despite feeling great heartache.

The finished Broken Heart visor

After seeing many fans wearing blinged up Taylor Swift concert outfits, I decided to create a fun visor using words from the song, and thought others may want to create something like it if wanting to be fancy when going to a Taylor Swift concert or if they are just true Taylor fans. Here’s the story of how I did it and why.   

In the song, Taylor sings about having to pull herself together before going on stage after what seems like a relationship break up in her life. The song lyrics “Breaking down, I hit the floor, All the pieces of me shattered as the crowd was chanting, "More". I was grinning like I'm winning, I was hitting my marks, ‘cause I can do it with a broken heart” actually made me shed a tear or two as I remembered the moment in 2006 when HGTV was filming me doing some art projects at my house for a show. That same day, which was supposed to be a great day, I had an intuition feeling in my heart that my grandma died. I was her caretaker and she was like a mom to me.

I love the hat colors!

We were extremely close, and when you are that close to someone, sometimes you FEEL things they feel. I should have been happy that day, but every time I took a break from filming, my eyes uncontrollably welled up with tears, but I calmed myself down, talking to myself and God in a mirror, as I dabbed them away. I somehow knew she died (she had been in a decline of health for a while), but I also knew she would have wanted me to push through it. She knew how creative I was and was excited for this opportunity when I talked to her about it just the night before the producers and videographers showed up at my house.

You can see my HGTV video footage in the videos below. You’ll see me with a smile on my face, because just like Taylor sings in her song, “the crowd” at my house was wanting more. I had to finish this day out with a smile on my face and the moment the crowd left and my husband told me the news, I literally fell to the floor, feeling like my heart and soul were completely shattered.

Since that moment, I realized there have been many times when I’ve felt completely heartbroken and shattered, yet I moved forward. You need to feel the sadness, as being sad sometimes is a part of being human, but you have to move forward. Life is like trekking through mountains. There are many peaks and valleys that aren’t that fun and sometimes the mountain is very steep and hard to climb, but it’s a beautiful view when you finally reach the top.

I wore the hat for my birthday

When I created this visor and many other projects from 2022 to 2024, I had many broken hearts, but pushing thorough with my creations, helped my heart heal. With each creative project I work on, I feel like I go through peaks and valleys while figuring out the design and when I finish it, I reach the top of the mountain and see something beautiful. When my husband and I spent all of 2023 putting our house back together after going through Hurricane Ian, we now see the beauty that came from all the hard work. It was definitely a BIG mountain!

The finished hat makes me feel happy when I look at it

As far as breakups and relationships, like Taylor, I’ve had my fair share of those too over the years. I had, what I thought were very close and loving friendships completely fall apart in recent years and it was very difficult to navigate through my feelings on it. I don’t talk about it in detail with many people, but the total and complete heartbreaks happened and they were not fun.

See my cute 15-second reveal of my Taylor Swift visor with the song that inspired it below or via my YouTube channel @carolynjbraden:

In one “breakup”, I suppose the “friend” whom I truly loved decided they didn’t need my love anymore and while that made me sad, I continue on, as I know many others love me and want my love in their life. I still have love in my heart for the person, but I had to let them go. They went along with others in making fun of me and my love and that hurt. Yes, unfortunately this teenager behavior can continue on into adulthood.

My visor is functional too!

I think that’s why Taylor Swift is so popular. As she matures, she is able to create relatable art from her relationship and friendship heartaches, similar to other artists and musicians. Alanis Morissette got an extreme amount of attention from her album, Jagged Little Pill, which was basically a relationship break up album. Anytime you can turn heartache into something beautiful, you are truly a gifted soul. I have been pouring all my sadness, heart and soul into my creations lately and it’s helped tremendously. Art therapy is a real thing and it works for me!

Watch me create the visor in the less than a minute video below or via my YouTube channel @carolynjbraden:

When I wore the visor in 2024 for my birthday, I felt fancy and fun. When you become an adult, no one seems to celebrate your birthday quite like they did when you were a kid, and I now believe your life, no matter how old you are, is something to celebrate.

One of the supposedly close “friendships” I had fell apart days before my birthday in 2023 (the timing was on their end and I know it was on purpose…how nice, right?) and I made sure I wasn’t going to let it bring me down. Feeling like your love is needed and accepted is a wonderful thing, and this person definitely did everything they could to let me know I was not accepted in their life anymore.

That year, though, my wonderful and supportive husband and I rented a boat on my birthday and it was so much fun, I decided to do it every year, God willing. Funny thing, someone in that “friend” crew reached out to me this year on my birthday, in 2024, acting like nothing happened. I asked to talk through our issues last year but was shut out, cyberbullied and more, but this year all I could wonder was “where were these texts last year…?”. People can really be strange sometimes. I pray for them.

When you have trauma, depression or anxiety around your birthday (it’s a thing that many feel and I used to until I understood why and dealt with it…read about it on here on Better Help’s website), surrounding yourself with people that love you is important.

The finished visor

The hat was also extremely effective for keeping my face shaded from the bright sun, as for my birthday in 2024, we visited a lake in the neighborhood we will move to as soon as our Florida house sells. Functional art is my favorite! I’ll wear this visor as a badge of honor as well, to remember how I must keep moving forward, past the broken hearts, into a beautiful life filled with people that I love and that will let me love them proudly and they will love me proudly too.

Just a little note: feeling love for someone is not only for romantic relationships!

Now you know the story behind the creation, and here’s how I made it. I thought others may want to create something similar to wear to a Taylor Swift concert or just because. It’s fancy, glittery and beautiful, like many of the outfits Taylor wears in her concert performances.

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Tools/Products:

Optional:

Listen to Taylor Swift’s “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” here on YouTube while you create (or anytime you need a reminder to be strong) like I did!

Directions:

Use your fingers or a wax pencil tool (you can pick up the alphabet beads with the wax pencil or your fingers) to lay out the alphabet beads (my spelled-out I CAN DO IT WITH A BROKEN HEART) on the hat OR lay them out where ever you want. I do this so I can understand what I want my design to look like before gluing.

The Taylor Swift craft set up

Once you know where you want to place the letter beads, start placing a dot of glue onto the back of each one and glue them onto the sunglasses.

I can do it with a broken heart

If any glue oozes out, use the toothpick or the pointy ended cotton swabs to remove the excess.

After the letter beads, I added flowers

Add some glue (I just carefully squeezed it out of the bottle) around the letter beads and add your flowers, then the rhinestones and pearls, varying the size and placement of each one.

I added rhinestones around the brim

I used the wax pencil tool to grab each one and place them on the glasses.

I squeezed rhinestones and pearls between the letters

Add some glue around the top and lower rims of the hat and add some rhinestones and pearls.

Adding more rhinestones

Add some glue around the sides of the hat strap and add some more rhinestones and pearls.

The visor is almost done!

This took me a few days to work on, a couple of hours at a time.

It’s good to work on this for small amounts of time to allow drying time

When you work on a craft like this in small increments of time, it gives it time to cure or dry a bit so no crystals or embellishments move around.

I hung my hat to dry on my light stand

Allow the full creation dry for 24 hours then wear and enjoy!

Did you make this craft or something similar? If so, let me know in the comments below!

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Carolyn J. (C.J.) Braden is the owner of Carolyn’s Blooming Creations is a regular contributor and editor for CBC. She has been featured in numerous media publications such as InStyle Magazine, on HGTV, on Bustle.com, and more. She is the author of the books Georgia McMasters in Amethyst Lake Cemetery, How To Be Yourself: 3 Ways To Help You Being You, and the illustrator for the children’s book Bridging Connections. She is a former classroom teacher that now dedicates her life to educating others on how to live their most healthy, creative and happy life. Learn more about her visiting our About Us page.