Miniature Mannequin Tutorial

 Good afternoon, friends!!  Yesterday I was browsing the web and found a beautiful French window display that had an old mannequin with a gorgeous lace skirt on.  I stared at the picture for a few minutes and thought.. I can make that.  I dug through my stash of lace and couldn't decide what to use.  I selected some vintage tulle that I recently bought for fifty cents at my local fabric honey pot store.  

I began by making the bodices out of oven bake clay which I much prefer to the air dry clay.  While they were baking, I dug through my stashes of supplies and found spare wooden spindles and buttons for the bases.  When they were ready I got to work.  

I painted the bodices and then covered them in wood glue and white tulle.  Then glued on the top piece and bottom stand.  I aged the body tulle which also kinda covered up the yellow-ish wood glue.  

For the skirts I just cut a long piece of tulle and ran a needle with thread through the top edge, pulling until I felt the skirt was pleated enough.  I thought about making some sort of shawl or lace top but wound up liking just a necklace.  The pink mannequin isn't quite finished.  She is the smaller, four inch tall gal.  I'm not quite satisfied with new necklace feeling like it needs something else.  As it needs to be really tiny, I haven't found what I need to use yet.  It's here somewhere!

Hope you enjoy!  

Isn't that skirt gorgeous?!?!  The tulle is old and relaxed just right.  Reminds me of something from the 1950's.

That's all for now.  I wish I had a beautiful Paris shop window to put them in!

Please share on Pinterest if you have a second!

If you share anywhere else please ask permission!

XOXO ~Laurie

hello gorgeous green

Oh my... I'm pretty sure any couch has ever made my mouth water so.

One day.. we will need a new couch.  I will not have a couch like this with a cat in the house... especially a blonde one.  Not that he's is going anywhere over a couch...

Man these are cool.

All photos found on this pinterest search. 

Except this one...

Which is the first one I saw before the salivating began.

Found it in this beautiful French home HERE.

window redo

 

 

Remember this picture from Image Inspiration on Sunday?  Well inspire it did.  I changed the items the rest in my bathroom window.  I needed to take the Christmas lights down and a few other things.  I added two stained glass pieces, a clipping off of one of my plants (because the cactus I wanted to go there was too big) and a few other things including my windrocks from our trip.

 

 As the vine roots in the bottle of water it will grow longer and fill the window.

 

This little deer is very breakable.  With my bathtub being right below and tile floors I always get nervous moving him.

Yes the tree is still there.  I like the birds on it.

 

 

Christmas at our house

I opted not to put up the big tree again this year.  I did however bring out my little threesome of alpine trees although not at the same time.  I just put a few things out as the mood struck me.  First I out the medium sized tree in my bathroom and strung the lights across the window to the plug.  I like the raw illumination.  I also found a bunch of birds that I had begun collecting and went through the house to get others and put them on that little tree.  About a week later I brought down the largest of the three trees, unplugged and took down the lamp on top of the fireplace and put that tree there... no ornaments.  On the same day I decided to put the smallest tree by the front door on the porch.  I made sure to secure it from the wind and added a timer so it would come on by itself and feathers that I had.  I also found a vintage garland that I bought at a yard sale sometime and draped it above the kitchen window.  That was it... until this past Sunday when I took the remaining summer hang out things down from the Oasis and back porch which included the white lights above the Oasis.  While wrapping them up on a warm Sunday I decided to make use of the other end of the Christmas lights on the little porch tree and draped lights over the front door.  I like having a lit up door to walk into.  They come on at about five and go off around eleven.  So that's it... Christmas at our house.  Not sure where the presents will go once wrapped.  I really need to get on that.

I have a strand of lights out on the loft over by the coyote.  You can usually see him better.

Framed painted linen from Grandmother Brown's house.



home decor

I am beginning to get the hint that copper is the new thing in home décor.  Maybe you knew this already.  It is shiny and bright and seems to add s little something to a simple shelf or cool morning... don't you think?  You know they make metallic spray paint in copper.  Oh I am seeing Christmas tree glitz in copper already! 

 

 

Found on whipperberry.com

 

 

 

Found on apartment therapy.

 

 

Found on pinterest but I wonder what my old modge podge boxes would look like spray painted with some of this!

 

 

Now isn't that a pretty mug of hot chocolate?

Found on freepeopleblog

 

 

Copper... isn't it pretty?

days of our day care

I love this job and being able to use my creativity on a daily basis. 

I especially like changing a bit of the scenery at the day care each month.

It amazes me how quickly the kids notice even small changes.

This November we have brought back our Thankful Tree practice for a second year.

I love the way it is going.  Plus we have a new tree this year.

I also got busy cutting up cereal boxes to make new garlands to use from year to year.

Of course they have glitter on them!  What kind of question is that???

I also used some paper feather that we colored months ago as decoration for the fourth time at least.

I think the first time was during Camp Arrowhead or thereabouts.

Here's a bit of what our day care looks like this month.

 

 

Indian corn.

Our Thankful Tree will soon be filled with colored leaves declaring the one thing we are thankful for each day.  Funny, I've gotten everything from friends and Lion King to Hello Kitty and one who was thankful that dinosaurs were real.  I made the tree from just cutting up a box and taping the separate branches to the wall and texturizing it with some markers.

Seriously, I mainly wanted to do these so I could mix different colors of glitter together for the Indian corn.

Meanwhile... we took a walk on a warm November day when two kindergarteners came to play.

I tried so hard to get the camera to focus on the walking stick but I like this picture anyway.

Looks like I caught Curious George looking at our new garland!

The kindergarteners got creative on the chalk board.