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/

French beadwork 3 corsages and 2 boutonnières homecoming

I have made a few corsages and boutonnières for tonights homecoming dance.  My daughters are going stag.  So the other three you see are for some good friends of theirs.  One is for a first date that is the green set.  The other is for a good friend who doesn't have a date also.  So we thought we would do something for these three friends to make it more special for them.  Since the theme of the dance is " Night in Paris"  We figured French beaded wire flowers was perfect as a special keep sake for the dance for everyone including my kids.
 
This is the one I made for my middle daughter.  Hers is the dress that was white that I modified.  Since her dress has snowflakes on it we thought a sort of winter theme would be good.  The pink was added so it could have a little pop of color.  The snow flake are actually buttons.  The lavender hearts are actually little rhinestone belt buckles. The blue snowflakes are rhinestone buttons. The pink flowers are sequins.  And the rest is made out of wire, seed beads and tape.  This is the heaviest out of all of the corsages that I made.  My daughter is fine with that as she really likes French beaded flowers.  My oldest daughter made the white beaded leaves.  They were originally going to be a gift for me.  She was going to made me a beaded orchid plant.  But after two years of it sitting in pieces I reclaimed my beads and her work so it could be made into something useful.  My middle daughter was happy to have this corsage because it represents two family members work.

This is the corsage my oldest daughter will be wearing.  This is one of two orchids that actually got made.  The other I made into a corsage and gave to my mother in law at mother's day.  I will see if I can get photos of it at a later date and post.  She was excited to see that I had made her flower into a corsage for her.  She felt a little bad that I never got the orchid plant. But I am not sad my kids will get more use from these corsages than I would a beaded plant I would have to dust. Plus I still get to enjoy them but on three people now and I know how much work went into making them so I still feel her love for me.  My youngest daughter helped me wit this one. One day she was home sick from school instead of just sitting in bed going stir crazy she beaded all the lavender micro beads that I used for the leaves.  I also used the lavender rhinestone buckles in this corsage too.

This one is for a two friends of my middle daughter who are  going on a first date.  Not only is it a first date for each other but their first date with any one.  So I wanted to help out and make this for them.  Glass seed beads, sequins and imitation pearls for baby's breath.  The girls favorite color is green and her dress is black so this is what I came up with.

 Because I used so many sequins this is the lightest one I have made the others are much heavier because of all the glass seed beads.  My kids do not mind the weight they expect beads to be heavy but others do not expect that much weight in a corsage so I was trying to make it lighter for them.

This is the boutonnière for the guy that matches the corsage above.  I used similar beads minus the white baby's breath look I used the black seed beads instead.  I like that they match but are still totally different.  His is also very light in weight.

The pink boutonnière is for another friend of my daughter who is also going stag to the dance. But he does not like to wear flowers so it may not ever end up being worn by him if he does not want it.  You ask why pink well it is his favorite color so we did it hoping he would like it enough to wear it but he probably won't.  This is also a  light weight one because I used sequins for the some of the leaves.  I hope the students like them as much as I do.  I also hope they all have a great night at the dance tonight.

Update the green ones the couple loved, my kids loved theirs and I guessed correctly that  the pink one was never worn as he hates wearing flowers.

Another update my daughter gave this pink beaded boutonnière to her homeroom teacher for him to wear for thanksgiving. He liked it which made my daughter happy. 

white homecoming dress

Sorry I forgot to take before pictures.  This was a dress my middle daughter got the summer of 2013.  It was donated to a church close swap.  What is a clothes swap you ask.  It is where you take your gently used clothes that you have out grown and trade with other people for sizes you fit into anything left over is donated to local thrift stores.  This dress was there ( actually is is a skirt and corset).  I took the embellishments off of it which had been six red roses and a few (about 30) red seed beads.  Thus leaving the dress almost totally white except for the red tie on the back.  I then repaired the damage to the dress and started to sew on white roses with green accent leaves and silver roses I also sewed on white sequin snowflakes. So the dress cost nothing except thread, flowers and sequins. It still retains the original red tie on the back may change that to white not sure as it does not bother me.

on a side note we also just used this dress in the play the wizard of Oz as the snow that fell on the poppies.  We had a ballerina dance across the stage with white disco lights going to represent snow.

We were given a wedding slip the summer of 2014 which happens to work well with this outfit length wise.  It too needed to be repaired where it had separated from its elastic.  So yet another part I did not have to pay for except for thread.

The head piece I made about a year ago just never posted on my blog.  when I got finished with the dress my daughter ran to my room to grab it from my dresser.  She was excited to add all the pieces together.  She also added the white shirt for modesty purposes.

Her hair  will be fancier for the dance but it is still a few weeks away so this was just her trying it on to see how it fit.

The play is done

The play is done and we all survived.

I had 2/3 of my children ill during the play.  All three of my daughters were in this play it was fun to be with them and watch them learn and grow. One had to learn to tap dance and do this while being tech crew chief and an actor in the play a dancer and a singer.  Another was singing and acting  all while going in and out of the hospital.  The third had the easiest time which was not easy and just had a stomach bug. It was not the easiest thing for us this go round as I said above I had a few ill children.  But as always we did enjoy it.  I would say lots of miracles happen during this play too many to go into.  The main tin man got sick and had to be replaced.  We had no understudy.  The young man who stepped in had two days to learn all the lines , songs, and marks and all and he did it God is amazing in what he can do to help us.  Another student rolled maybe tore a ligament and still went on.  I am not in the photo as I am  the one taking it so do not look for me in it I am not there.  There was almost not an actor on stage that I did not either make, loan or repair a costume or several for.  I did not do much with most of the munkins as we borrowed those.  The only munkins I did costuming for was my own daughter and the yellow brick road I did modifications on yes ours was a human not painted on the ground.  She would dance and the foursome would follow her thus follow the yellow brick road.  My daughter (  7th grade) was one tall munkin at 5 feet 5 inches much taller than Dorthy who was a (10 grader). My children I believe are born in reverse height order the oldest is the shortest and the youngest will be the tallest when they are all done growing  Thanks to all who came and supported the students made it all the more fun.