Knight in shining Armor

My middle daughter during the summer made this Knight in shining armor for a friend of hers.  We forgot to take photos before she gave it away.  Recently she was given access to this item again.  She was excited that we would now be able to take photos of the item as it had a lot of work involved with making this fairy.  This was probably the most elaborate fairy she and I have made together with over 100's of hours in the making of it.   May not look that way to people looking at.  Usually this would be posted on my daughters blog but she is debating on getting rid of her blog and just joining my blog as a guest blogger.  With school and such and health issues she figures this would be better in the long run.

The box that that was used to house the fairy was found thrift shopping.  The little jar that is tied to the top of the box was purchased at Hobby Lobby.  Originally it had the recipients name in it.  But we did not want to show the name on my blog for privacy reasons.   It is now a very cherished family item.  The inside of the box is set up with grass and fall leaves.

The fairy has some accessories with him.  A sword a shield and a jar of coins and jewels.  The jar was purchased at hobby lobby as was the weapons.  But the weapons originally were necklace charms that we modified for our own ideas.  The jar of gems and coins was made out of and old bracelet that we took the gems out of and added to the jar.  The coins in the jar are actually made out of a dime and a penny that we took a hole punch too to make coins the correct size for a fairy.  Took many hours to make those coins.


The armor was hand made mostly by me and my daughter.  The shoulder armor pieces are two pennies that I hammered into the desired shape on a small metal rod that I used like an anvil.  When I had them to the desired shape I used the same hole punch that i used to make the coins to make the holes to attach it to the chainmaile.  Then added those four coins to the jar of coins too.

The knights hair is a small piece of rabbit fur left over from the costume of Puck from A Mid Summer Nights Dream.

The little bits of fabric used on this Fairy is also scraps from other characters from mid summer night dream.  The cape is from mustard seed and the shinny loin cloth is from moth. There is a little strip of leather she placed over the loin cloth.  She also made a little black bag that was to carry little fairy items what ever they might be.   There is little pieces of twine wrapped around his legs and one has a bone button on one leg as if the fairy had found it and liked it so much added it to his clothing.  The wings are made out of a butterfly that is supposed to be used as a hair clip.  My daughter dismantled it ( removing the clip, antenna, and butterfly body) and reconstructed it to be in the shape she wanted for the fairy.

 

 The helmet I made for the knight.  It is made out of a Jarritos bottle cap.  It was the soda that we had at my daughters 15th birthday party the cap was left over from that party.  I did the same thing to this hat as I did to the pennies.  In that I took a hammer to the cap till it was flat then I made a make shift anvil and shaped the piece to the knights head.  It took about 8 hours to get the shape I wanted.  I sat on the front porch working on this it was fun to do as random people walked past in the middle of the summer they would come over and see what I was making.  The wings are some pieces we found at hobby lobby that are meant to be used for scrape booking but we thought it would be fun to have a Mercury look to the hat especially since the fairy already had wings.  There are little pieces of leather (scrapes from the rabbit fur) tied to threw the  holes I punched into the hat as I did the pennies ( adding the punches to the the jewel jar).

 

My oldest daughter still needs votes for her song if you are interested in voting we would greatly appreciate it please go to this link and vote for her song.  She is ranked 18 and is in risk of not being able to reach her goal of helping raise money for cancer research.  This is very poignant to me today as I found out today that my sister in laws mother in law passed today from cancer.  This nice lady baby sat my children when they were little.  It is scary how many times my family has been touched by cancer and I am sure it will happen many more time s before it is my time to go back to heaven.  Thank you http://songsforlife.org/girl-wanna-china-khoral/

Mummified fairies

    Went to a ren-fair recently.  while there my daughter got infatuated with mummified fairies.  A person at the fair was selling some, but they were well out of my daughters price range and mine.  I knew we could make them on my own at a tenth the price. So I said I would figure it out and teach her how to do it.  I did just that and helped her with making her first one.  Because she did most of the physical work and I did the brain-work of figuring it out.  I am going to let her post it on her blog.

She has uploaded the first part of her tutorial today the supply list.  She is planning on a three part series on how to make our version of this item.  She also plans on making a few fairy houses to place these fairies in.  She wants to show the process in that too.

Part 2 Homemade Christmas

These are the handmade Christmas presents that my children gave to each other. The oldest two gave this doll to the youngest; the pattern came from a toaster-cover pattern that had belonged to my husband's grandmother. The children and I modified it to have legs and such so it could be an actual doll since the original had a piece of card board that you fit into the toaster slots to hold her up right. I don't know about you, but that sounds like a fire waiting to happen.

Part 1: Russian nesting dolls

All the mother dolls above .
All the dolls out of their mothers below.

This is one of our collections at our house. This post is for my MIL; she wants to know which ones we have because she likes to add to this collection at holidays, and is forgetting what she has given us. My children also collect these dolls, so there will be three more posts; one post for each daughter's collection of dolls. This collection is mine. I own 7 sets

Newest Set
(7 people in this set) the only wood-burn set I have


This set is porcelain ,and I have two identical of this set
(6 people in this set) ( 12 between the two sets)


This set is Little Red Ridinghood, but no woodsman; just Red, wolf, grandma, and cottage
(4 people, sort of; one is a house)

A sort of Nativity
Joseph, Mary, Wise man, Shepherd, and baby Jesus (5 people)

The largest set I have (12 people)



My oldest set (this set is from before the wall fell) (5 people)

Kokeshi Doll

I posted this doll yesterday, but without it's story. If anyone can tell me more about this Kokeshi doll, I would love that.

I found it at a thrift store for 50 cents. I have seen these on the internet from $30.00 to $130.00. This looks like the lower end price scale to me, of the ones I have found, but I'm not sure. It has a signature on its base; I cannot read it, of course. Maybe someone can tell me the name of the artist who made it. I'm wondering if anyone knows how to date this, too.
Also, I'm wondering if anyone can tell me if it is a girl or boy figure. I am leaning towards male, but I'm not sure because of what looks to be Kanzashi painted in the hair. I really like this doll; I also like the fact that it doesn't have arms. I'm also wondering what type of flower is represented here.

Update:
So far, I now know for sure this is a girl, and she is between 30 and 40 years old. She is made from one piece of wood; that was a question I was asked. The name is still a mystery, but I have been told one of the symbols means stone and that that is a common symbol in names, so not much there yet.

Hair today gone tomorrow

On Saturday I talked about how long all three of my daughters' hair was. Also how I wanted to make Kanzashi for them. I still do, just one will have to be on clips instead of combs or hair pins now.

Because, as of today, one of them no longer has long hair. She had the longest out of all three; it was below her waist, and she was starting to sit on it. It was getting a little annoying for her and hard for her to keep the knots out, with winter static and all. So we removed it (a good 18-24 inches original length, removed over 12 inches in length; look in the mirror in the right photo you can see the haircut is half done), so her hair is just above her shoulders, now. Sorry, I didn't feel good this weekend and didn't get that bathroom cleaned -- dirty mirror, oops. She is also embarrassed by this photo because this is her pajama shirt, and she never shows her shoulders unless she is in a bathing suit. It is only on her because I am cutting her hair, otherwise no photo would ever be taken with her dressed this way.

The last time I cut her hair I made the doll shown to the left. Yes that is real hair from my daughter on the doll. So now I have this stack of freshly washed and dried clean hair again, trying to figure out if I should make something again.

The reason is, last time I did something with it because that was her first haircut. Well, this is only her second one, and she is ten. Each haircut represents roughly half her life. So I am taking suggestions as to what to do. Currently, the hair is just resting in a metal tin 'till I figure out what to do with it. Photo at left taken in my old home. The room was being rewired; those are not live wires on that wall.

Cookie Cutters

I know Christmas is over, but I just wanted to show this ginger bread cookie house that is on sale at Williams and Sonoma. I showed one at Halloween that I got from them; I just think these things are so cool. Maybe in time if I get enough of these types of things I can make a whole holiday-themed village because I can use these for other holidays just by changing the frosting color and candies and not using certain parts of the kits. Plus, with the price of pre-baked kits, this is cheaper and you get to spend more time with your kids while making it. My husband let me ordered this right after Christmas when it went on sale as my Christmas gift .

I don't have it yet, but I will get to use it next year. It will be cute with the sled my sister bought me last year, pictured below, from this same company.

Other cool 3d cookie cutters I found:

here
here
here

Cool Cookie Cutters

Just one of those things I will add to my list of wants, as if it wasn't long enough as is. Have you checked out William Sonoma's Web site lately? They have these cool stand up cookie cutters. They are on sale at the moment; I am so thinking of getting these but will hold off for awhile. I have a kid who is born right around Halloween time, and she loves all things Halloween. I think this would be so cool to have for birthday party fun and such. The photos in this post are not mine; they are from William Sonoma. I have made the pictures links. So, if you want to check them out or order them for yourself, just click on the photos.

R is for...

Rock-n groups on flicker that I am a member of but not admin.

D is for....

Dolls, and lots of them. I have collected dolls since I was a little girl. My favorites are mimes and pirouette clowns. I have never been very found of hobo clowns, but I have a few of them because people have given them to me, but I much prefer the pantomime look. I also love raggedy dolls and Russian nesting dolls, too. I have other doll likes as well, such as miniature doll houses and paper dolls; I have lots of those. If you haven't figured it out by now, I have a few red cupboards in my house; three, to be exact. I love red along with black and white (white more as an accent color than a main color). There are a few more doll cupboards in the house, but those have the dolls in them that my children collect. Those cupboards are different colors than this one, one is blue, and one brown, but I will get them painted in time to either black or red or one of each.

Click on this picture to go to flicker page if you want to know about each individual doll and where it came from or from whom it came.