A little admission, or not historical sew fortnightly challenge 10

Well folks here we are at another Monday, can you believe it.

I wanted to have something wonderful to show you for the 10th historical sew fortnightly challenge - Art, but alas I have nothing. I just couldn't settle on anything early enough, I really couldn't find anything that filled me with creative ju-ju.  Yes there are hundreds and hundreds of lovely piece of art out there and that may have been part of the problem. At first I swayed toward a ballerina and thought I would love a pretty dress to swirl about in (and still would), but I've no real need at the moment and not enough time to do the embroidery I wanted on it.






Have you ever seen anything so pretty as the embroidery on this skirt? I so want to sew something like this soon.

Also I thought about a shawl like this one, but time and need were against this too.

Then I finally made a decision, as I still have desires on the Mirror, Mirror outfit.

A swiss waist

(I must apologise here, I cut and paste this painting, lost the link to it and now I can't find where I got it from or who it's by, so sorry but if anyone knows please let me know and I can amend this.)

A swiss waist like this would work very well with the blouse from Mirror Mirror I think and I love the look of the embroidered flowers down the bottom edge.

So briefly what's the difference between a corset and a swiss waist? The Dreamstress  (Leimomi who is also the brilliant lady organising the HSF) has a great blog going into the full details here but essentially I think it is; a corset is worn under clothes and has boning channels that show and metal work and a swiss waist is worn over the dress and can be highly decorated, has hand worked eyelets not metal showing and no busk (that's the hook and eye thing down the front).

Well time was against this too, so this is as far as I have got..

I did have a number of ribbon roses to go next to the embroidered stems too, but they went on to bracelets for the stall last Friday and went down rather well too.

Not good progress eh. Well basically it will have to wait now. Yesterday arrived with the realisation it is now 5 months to the wedding and also 3 weeks till I have a stall at the Steampunk Doncaster Tiffin in the Park for which I have some great ideas for phone case holders and belt accessories as well as the usual hats, so all that said I'm thinking that challenge number 10 will just have to go on hold as might some of the others too.
Priorities have to be sorted, it's just the way it is. If you have been following the challenges please forgive and bear with me I hope to fill this blog up with lots of other exciting things too.

How cool does this material look for some steampunk hats, I can't wait to get going on them, so I best be away to get something done.  I've also promised myself that the bridesmaids' dresses muslins will be done and fitted this month, 

Hugs and Kisses

Ally

A big thank you to Honor

Good Morning all

and what a change from Tuesday's blue skies, today sees this being written next to a window covered in rain and by the look of those clouds it could stay like that all day. Although who knows?, I don't know what it's like where you are but here in the middle of England the weather has been rather erratic lately changing very fast from downpours to sun and back again.

But enough of my English preoccupation with the weather, (why are we like that?); today I want to say an enormous thank you to a lovely lady, who I don't know all that well, we go to the same dances and chat a bit. But I have found myself overwhelmed by her generosity. Another case of someone hearing what I'm up to and saying, 'I've got some ... in the back of a cupboard do you want it?'

Well in Honor's case it was feathers, and some other bits and pieces, she had dabbled at hat making awhile back and as all crafty people seemed to amassed 'some' bits and pieces.  I obviously said yes please and the other day she brought them along to a dance we were at. At the time I couldn't really see what was involved in the stash, but now having got it all out I am so lucky to know such wonderful generous people.  Honor, if you ever want a hat for anything please just ask and I would be delighted to make you one.

There was so much stuff here, loads of different types of feathers, hat bases, combs, ribbons, beads etc. Thank you Honor.

One of my favourite are goose biot feathers.

There were several different colours of these wonderful feathers which I love as they make such a dramatic impact to a hat. To take them from looking kinda dull to wow is as simple as curling a ribbon and just the same process. The feather has been striped on one side so if you drag a pair of scissors down that side it will curl or for a more dramatic curl you can use curling tongs and another technique is to attach the top and the bottom with gives a lovely look.

And here's some in a finished plume on a lovely mini-tricorn hat I am almost finished, just need to line this one now.

Well that's all for today, more next week
Hugs and Kisses

Ally

making a tentacle

Good morning all you lovely internet users.

A real quickie today I'm afraid as there is much brewing here in the honey pot, ooh brewing in a honey pot would that make mead??? So I haven't much time to blog this morning, but I have had a number of people asking about the octopus tentacles, so I thought I would quickly pop up some pictures of the making of a tentacle.

I will fill you all in soon as to what all the goings on are but for now all I can say is that I'm starting to think about a giveaway to mark reaching 100 likes on my facebook page, and I hope to announce that early next week.

But in the mean time a quick tour of tentacle making;

Polymer clay needs kneading a lot to make it work nicely and to make it easier to knead it really needs warming. So pop it in your jeans pocket or place it close to your heart and forget about it for awhile. (I do know a number of ladies that warm theirs in their bra, and it works.) Then once warm, knead really well, boring may be and possibly tough on your hands (although if very tough then it's not been warmed enough), possibly watch telly during this bit and breaking it up into smaller bits to be kneaded individually and then putting back together helps too. Ohh and another thing to be aware of is this stuff is nasty, don't be eating at the same time and put it in your mouth by mistake, washing hands before eating after handling polyclay is always advised.

Well for the tentacles I used a bright pink that I had mixed up for another project and was left over. Another nice thing about this stuff is that if you can't buy the colour you want you can usually mix something fairly close with the colours that are available. I knew I would be painting the hardened clay but thought that there would be a possibility to use the pink too.

I broke off a small amount and rolled in out thinning slightly at one end, and then flattening the tip of the thinner end more.

 Then I took a very small bit and rolled this out to into a very small thin sausage shape.

 Taking a sharp blade I sliced small discs off this smaller sausage shape.

These I rolled briefly to soften the edges and then placed in a row down one side of the tentacle.

Then taking a darning needle or similar shape point I pressed an indent into each disc, giving the shape of the suckers, and if you are planning to hold the tentacle in place with wire or the like it's a good idea to put a hole through where you want it now.

Arrange in a life like manner and bake carefully following the instructions on the packet, which can vary for different types, so I'm not putting them down here.

By using pink I was able to keep the inside of the suckers pink (a place that would have been very hard to paint) and hopefully added more depth to the model. Hard to see on the photos I'm afraid.

Well I covered the painting briefly last time and there is lots of this stuff on youtube so unless asked I'm not going to bore you going into that, so here's the finished effect.

Well that's all from me fr now, till next time keep well,
Hugs and Kisses

Ally

Steampunk octopus and a paint job

Morning all

Well if anyone follows me on Instagram you'll know that I managed to get the hat proportions right for the riding hat I was after which I have to say I was quite pleased with, so I wanted to decorate my first one well and since I'm all about the steampunk at the moment, I wanted to give it a steampunk feel but without the goggles or cogs.  So a little bit of thinking brought me to octopus or octopi (is that better grammar).  I'm not sure why steampunk and octopi are so well linked but they are, definitely more so than whales or sharks who also lurk about in the depths of the oceans.

Going with that theme I found a lovely bit of blue velvet to give the feel of the sea, and decided on a buckle to hold it at the back and an octopus sitting at the front. Not having a buckle or octopus lying around I needed to make them, so out comes the polymer clay

I'm not sure if I have mentioned this on here before but I have a real love of polymer clay it is so versatile, I have been playing with it for years now and love to incorporate it into projects. I even have made buttons out of it that can be the exact colour and size/shape I want and go through the washing machine without a problem, wonderful stuff. But I digress as usual.  Polymer clay is the perfect stuff to make an octopus out of, and today I thought I'd show you a few before and after pictures of my painting process.  (There are loads of really good youtube tutorials on painting if you want more details.)

So here Sid before his paint job:

The first thing I did was give him a black wash, ie very watery black acrylic paint sponged over him to soak into the crevices. The buckle and extra tentacles on the other had had a complete black paint job because I wanted them to have a metal look by the end of the process. (Did I mention that I thought a few extra tentacles curling out from the band would look cool?)

Once Sid was quite grubby looking and completely dried off, I started to dry brush him. I have 2 favourite paints for dry brushing, both permanent acrylic metallic paint, first 'pure gold' and second 'copper'. I seem to use these on everything.

Firstly I dry brushed the gold on to Sid and the other parts

Then after a little pause, to ensure that everything was completely dry, or maybe just to make a cup of tea, I dry brushed on the copper, lightly on Sid, but more heavily on the buckle to add to the rusty old metal look.

So then it was just a matter of putting it all together.  I had put holes in the end of the separate tentacles and a couple in Sid too, so the tentacles could be wired and then sewn on that way and Sid was secured with a little bit of sewing.

Here is the back with the buckle in place and the tentacles curling out of the depths....

and Sid in prime spot on the front.

so before and after..

I hope you'll agree that he looks more steampunky.

and just in case polymer clay is new to you, it comes in a whole range of lovely colours too that can be used in wonderful ways that never need painting, I was just using up some old dirty clay in this project.

Here's a couple of non-painted things I've made to give a feel for it..

Hugs and Kisses

Ally