Finished Attic, Final Shots, and Moving On

Well, the attic extension is officially finished.  I was lucky enough to have it featured in the Winter 2013 issue of Fashion Doll Quarterly!  I am very excited about it and thankful to Pat Henry at FDQ for doing the spread, it looked great and she is a wonderful and kind person.  Now we can leave Evangeline, to pine away for Mortimer in the solitude of her attic.  Below are some final pics of the attic before moving on.

and now it's time to move on to my next project, with a new muse: Tonner's Anne de Legere!

Building Permit

Evangeline has informed me that there is no more room in the attic.  She has two lovely outfits en route and there isn't room for so much as a hat pin.  She has packed her bags and is checking in to the Ipswich Grand Hotel until such time as I can provide her with an appropriate abode.

I have filed for the necessary permits:

and tomorrow begins construction on the new north wing of Evangeline's Attic!  Stay tuned!

Birthday Present For Evangeline, or, How To Hang a Tapestry

Yesterday, when Evangeline came home from work at the mortuary, she found a large parcel waiting for her.  She hauled it up to her attic and opened it to find a lovely French Aubusson tapestry inside with a little note in delicate script that said, "Happy birthday Evangeline, we love you."

Clearly this treasure did not belong in the attic so Evangeline set to work hanging it in the largest and loveliest bedroom in Barkley Manor....

Well, actually, I won a pair of miniature tapestries on Ebay.  I won them for $7 each.  They are about 10" square and they look like they are actually meant to be sewn inside a fancy border on an accent pillow.  But as it happens they are perfect scale for Evangeline:

I used these in Evangeline's library and at the time I hung them on the wall using small glue dots but I always wanted to make a proper hanging rod for them.  I have recently disassembled the library and turned that space in to a larger bedroom for Evangeline so now is the perfect time for me to hang the tapestry properly.  For this project I am using the tapestry on the left.

To start with I trimmed up a bamboo skewer to be slightly larger than the tapesty:

Then I whittled down the ends a bit so they would fit inside some small knobs I have that will work nicely as finials.  The small knobs are by Tim Holtz and can be found at Michael's.

I then sprayed the skewer with gold spray paint.  It's easiest if you stick it in a piece of styrofoam, spray paint it, let it dry, then stick the painted end in the styrofoam and spray the unpainted end, let that dry and you're ready to go:

I glued one end of the skewer into the screw hole of he knob:

I made hanging hooks out of some other doo-dads by Tim Holtz.  I believe these are meant to pin small notes or ephemera on to craft projects.  I used a pair of needle-nosed pliers to bend the stick pins into hooks:

In the picture above, the two hooks on the right are what they look like when you buy them at the store.  The two on the left are after I bent them using the pliers.  In the picture below you can see how I then used wire cutters to trim off the sharp points and used the pliers to bend the remaining piece inward to close the hook:

I threaded them on to the skewer:

and glued the other end of the skewer into the remaining knob and hung it above the fireplace in Evangeline's bedroom.  Happy Birthday Evangeline!

The Circus is in Town!

I have always loved Tonner's Sinister Circus line but there always seemed to be other dolls that were higher on the "to buy" list.  When I heard that there were more coming in 2013 I decided it was time to buy the first round because there will be greater competition for them when the new ones come out.  Like all Tonner and Wilde dolls pictures don't do them justice and when I got them home they really inspired me to create a nice display for them.  Originally I wanted to do a circus tent.  I looked into buying a dog tent and salesman sample tents but they were all too big.  As I was doing some research on what vintage circus tents looked like I discovered that the early circuses were actually on the stage, in theaters.  That made life so much easier.  I decided to build them a theater.

I found this very heavy bookcase at a consignment store for $10:

I liked the look of the dark wood, I thought it would make a nice Victorian era theater.  I removed the shelf and headed to Lowes to look for a cornice board.  I found some great pieces of chair rail molding that would be perfect:

The top piece is 8 feet long, cost $14, and is what I used to make the cornice.  The bottom piece is also 8 feet long, cost $10 and is what I will use to make columns on the sides.  I cut the pieces to size using a hand saw.  I spray painted them with the same walnut spray stain I used to make EG's attic.  I then used a 24K Gold Leafing marker to add highlights (to do this, I used the same technique described in my entry on making miniature paintings for EG's library).  When it was dry and looked sufficiently like a cornice in an old, seedy, theatre, I took a strand of battery-operated tiny wire lights off of EG's xmas tree and hot glued them to the cornice.  It worked really well!

I bought a gold tension curtain rod at Walmart ($2) and 2 yards of panne red velvet at Jo-Ann's ($8 total after coupon).  Panne velvet is perfect for this because it is so supple that it will make realistic, to-scale, folds in the curtains.  It also doesn't fray so if you cut clean lines you do not need to hem every side.  I cut two panels.  I folded the tops backward about and inch and half and pinned it:

I zipped the panels through the sewing machine and hung them on the tension rod.  I hot glued the cornice in place:

I still need to turn the other piece of molding into columns for the sides and my plan is to get a series of vintage landscape posters to use as changeable backgrounds, just as they did in turn of the century theaters.  I may also add some gold fringe to the edges of the curtains and I may do a second set of curtains in the back as well.  I haven't decided if I am going to add a chandelier or not, I could go all out and really pimp this one out. There are so many possibilities!  I think it will be great fun to rotate the "act" on display and there will be updates as this set evolves!