For those that would like to journey down the long and winding path I took over the last year or two researching the history and construction of parasols, I finally got around to putting my thoughts together into an article along with a lot of my pictures. I taught a class on it at our last Kingdom Collegium, and am doing a hands on workshop this weekend for two of the three methods if anyone is in the Phoenix area and interested in making one.
I make no claims to be the be all end all on this topic, and it was really hard to research at times. A lot of fun, but not the easiest accessory to find! So if you have more information, or know that I got something wrong, please don't hesitate to give me a shout out. I tried to cover the history of parasols, construction techniques, and my own modern tweaks to make it more camping friendly. Like collapsing down into a carry-on suitcase. ;) I also included a rough cost guide at the bottom for the various methods so you know ahead of time how much it will set you back. Really it's not much; the cheapest one was about 11USD plus fabric, and the most expensive one was 20-25USD plus fabric. Since it only takes about a yard each of canopy and lining, I was able to use what I had in my stash for most of them.
http://www.screentanning.com/Parasol_Han
Happy browsing.. it's a long and a little wordy (though if you've followed my blog for a while this should be no big surprise ;), but it also has lots of pictures. I promise I won't be offended if you just skim the pictures! LOL
Once I had a term to search, I started trying to see how far back pliqué a jour went. So far the earliest example I can find is the Mérode Cup from the 15th century. If you have any other examples of pre-16th century pliqué a jour, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to see them! I know it was rare during this time and only possessed by the ridiculously wealthy, but it certainly existed.
There seem to be two types of pliqué a jour. The first one, and probably easiest is piercing your design into copper, gold, or fine silver and then filling the holes with enamel. (This is very simplified, but in a nutshell...) You take dry enamel, wash it with distilled water, mix in some klyr fire, then you take a spatula with some wet enamel on it and touch it to the side of a hole while dragging it across. This fills up the space using capillary action. Let it completely dry (can be sped along by placing on top of or near a kiln), and then put in a kiln and fire to the orange peel stage (just before the glass completely melts the grains will start to merge and it looks like the skin of an orange). This makes kind of a webbing that you can build on top of. Repeat until all of the holes are completely filled to a little above full. Then fire it completely so that the glass melts completely and goes clear. Take an alundum stone and grind the top of the piece under some running water till the glass is flush with the rest of the piece. Work it with wet sandpaper of finer and finer grits till you've attained the finish that you want. Fire one final time to re-melt the enamel and give it a glossy finish. If using copper, you'll have to pickle between each firing. I use citric acid pickle for enamel as it doesn't seem to affect the colors of the enamels.
The second technique, that I haven't gotten a chance to try yet, looks to be closer to the early examples (Mérode cup and Cellini's bowl description) that I have found. It sounds like you basically do cloisonné on top of mica, or another substance that can be mostly peeled off the back, and then remove the mica by scrubbing or etching with acid. Would love to try this technique, but guess I can't till I manage to buy an enameling kiln. Le sigh. ;)
For my first piece, I decided to go with the piercing method as it seemed a little less likely to all fall apart. I'm still trying to improve my technique with cloisonné on metal, I wasn't feeling brave enough to try it without any yet! Above is a hi-res picture of my seahorse, and the small one is closer to actual size. It's really pretty tiny; right around 1.5". I was grabbing some enameling supplies in Lonnie's and saw this little die cut on my way out. I thought it would be cute if I pierced some scales along its back, gave it some defined fins, and a little tummy. I'm quite happy with it as a first attempt at this new technique.
I think I'm just going to officially call my and ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88.9){kind=small}
ezabella's hair endeavors "The LocksSmiths". Since she already posted her awesome button hair-do on her journal from Coronation weekend, I figured I'd post shots of all of the hair taping I did. Dame Angele contacted me before coronation and asked me if I'd help her then Highness with her hair on the day of coronation. She wanted a long braid down her back and some softness around her face. After she came over to my house for a consultation with me and
ezabella and to show us the fake hair she had purchased for the long braid, she decided on the two part twist for the softness around the face coming down and working into a four part braid for the large braid down the back. I showed her some of my hair jewelry (those modern ones that look like little springs with jewels on top), and offered that I could sew ribbon to match her coronation dress through the hair and put the jewelry in the braid. Sewing the ribbon through would also help to secure the fake hair to her real hair and ensure it wouldn't fall out during coronation... 'cause yeah.. that'd be a bad thing! O_oI did the basic two part twist that I always do for hair taping by splitting the hair down a center part and then working it from her temples down to the nape. I tried to position it a little higher and thicker at her temples than normal too so that it would help cushion the crown. Once both sides were twisted, I simply fed each tail through the top of the fake hair braid and pinned it on the opposite side of the head after tucking the ends in. Then I sewed ribbon through the whole affair and put the lovely roses and rhinestone hair jewelry she'd found in the alternating hair parts of the braid. The four part braid turned out really nice as it's a good wide flat braid and has kind of a rope effect in the center as you always end up crossing the middle in the same direction. Here you can see it with
ezabella 's lovely coronet on for sizing before second court.After coronation, while hanging out in the bar (I love this event site... lol) people were getting rather toasty (both heat wise and other) as the air conditioner can't quite handle the amount of people that show up for coronation. I had several people ask me about how I did her Majesty's hair and I went ahead and demo'd while putting up several people's hair to help cool them off.
( Click here for more pictures... )
Hey all :) I know I haven't been around for a loooong while. I have a lot of catch up posts to make. Weee! Thought I'd start with this weekend's projects. I have one friend that just had a baby, and another that is about to have a baby. I made one of these for a previous friend and she really enjoyed it and had lots of people ask about it.. so thought I'd make some more. It's a baby wipe case masquerading as a clutch.
I altered the design a little since the last one so that the band closes with velcro to help keep it closed and the wipes fresh, and open up so that you can still use the wipe pull opening.
They're pretty easy to make if you want to make some of your own. It's some fancy 4" wide ribbon (the roses), 2" wide or so satin ribbon, rhinestone buckles, and a Huggies baby wipe case. Just add some hot glue, rhinestones, tiny butterflies.. your choice. :)
( A few more pictures inside... )
A while back my friend asked me to take a piece of sea glass and make it into a piece of jewelry for his wife. They had taken their honeymoon in Nantucket, and run across this piece of sea glass while strolling on the beach one day. It looks almost delft-like in it's design, so I decided to do a very organic looking design around it. There was also a large empty space on the back, so I made the design extend onto the piece itself to balance the whitespace and provide a little bit more insurance that it wouldn't fall out. ;) It took me an embarrassingly long time to finish this piece. The metal shrunk a lot more than I anticipated in the casting process. I ended up modifying the design so that it has the open space you see on the side there so that I could get the sea glass in and accommodate for the shrinkage. Which required me to solder some pieces that I had previously cut back on... and that was the crux of the problem. I tried and tried and tried to get it to solder back on but it just wouldn't go. I started feeling like a complete failure and that I'd forgotten everything, but it just seemed like I couldn't get enough heat into the piece.
One day I go to try again, and I can't remember what I'd done with my torch. In a fluster of frustration and determination to finish the piece, I go to the jewelry supply store to buy another torch. Turns out... I was right. The piece of poop torch I was using wasn't getting enough heat into the piece. I came home with the new torch and had the pieces soldered back on and was setting the sea glass within 10 minutes. I think I cried I was so relieved to finally get it back together. I felt like I was starting at humpty dumpty and had run out of duck tape. But, it all ended well and I actually rather like the empty space and it's still really firmly in there.
( More shiny pics here... )
- Mood:
relieved
I'm also amused because tonight I watched the news after the olympics, and one of the headline stories was about a rainbow. Yes, a rainbow. Not an unusual rainbow or anything. It just sprinkled a tad today and there was a rainbow. :) It tickled my fancy and was way better than hearing about some horrible murder or kidnapping or other negative thing that is on news programs. Yay rainbows!
Along those lines, here's an amusing game to waste a few minutes on.. because you know secretly you've always longed to be a robot unicorn ;D
http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-a
And if you would like to see the music video that the sound track is from, it's worth a good giggle too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSMeUPFjQ
A last minute Estrella project popped up yesterday. My friend, Baroness Ann Busshenell, needed a message board of sorts to put in front of the period demo center. We brainstormed for a bit as to what we could do.. then I had to go and stick my hand in the air! O_o This is probably how I ended up being one of her deputies in the first place. ;D Poor Ann was loading bricks for her famous ovens into her truck and had no time for any further projects. I had the idea that we could make a chalkboard. They sell chalkboard paint in the store and I've always been somewhat curious to try it out. I also wanted to put a layer of magnetic paint below the chalkboard paint, but the chalkboard paint was $15 for a little can and the magnetic paint was $30 for a little can. So, just chalkboard this year. :)Anyhow, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, I volunteered to make a chalkboard for the Period Demo Center. I thought a plain board would be pretty dull, so I'm making a triptych. Here it is all cut out and assembled from this afternoon. Since then I've put wood putty in all the seams, sanded it as best I can, primed it twice, and am about to go put my second coat of chalkboard paint on it. It's been a busy day! According to the can it says that after 3 days you can prep the surface and use it... but it doesn't say *how* you are supposed to prep the surface. Silly me figured you could just grab some chalk when it was all dry and go to town. So, I guess I'm off to google appropriate "prepping" methods for chalkboard paint. Hopefully I'll find something that will make it ok to use sooner than three days out... as well... that's over half way into the war. At least this time it wasn't because I procrastinated! Lol ^_^
Along those lines, I don't think the cancer dress is happening. I am wrapping up Mike's sleeves though, so he should definitely have something new to wear this year. Yay!
So I find myself strangely apathetic about finishing anything for Estrella. I suppose it's kind of nice. :) If I finish and have new things to wear, great! If not.. meh. I like my current stuff. I did finish a polar fleece hoodie for myself, which is really the important thing as I *freeze* every year. I'm also endeavoring to finish something for Mike so he has a new outfit, or at least partial outfit, to wear. He does *not* have anything really to wear. He has one outfit that still fits and it's like 8 years old. O_o So, focusing on him first. Along those lines, here's his hat! I finished the awesome feather thing last night and stitched it on today. Tada! I did stuff! ^_^ I'm celebrating the small victories.It's in a lovely silver cotton velvet that is *so* soft. I was going for the Italian bonnet with the cartridge pleated crown. It ended up a little bunchier in the front than what I was going for, but I still think it's a pretty spiffy hat. The band is a cool metal and fake pearl trim that
ezabella gave me. The place she gets her fabric jewelry from sends free "thank you" gifts sometimes and she had no use for this. Works great on a hat though! The cartridge pleats are reinforced with this really hideous wool we found that is a bright acid yellow and ochre tie dye. I got it for inter-lining a cloak as I would certainly never want to use it as an outer and would therefore not talk myself out of putting it inside the cloak where it wouldn't be seen ;D( Cut for more pictures... )
So, I'm not sure about you, but I often have guys say that they won't do "late period" because it's not manly. Well I have a great big :-P for you! It can too be manly!
( Click here for pictures of manly clothes in progress... )
So... I'm going to live in imaginary land where 2009 never happened. Here's Mike's second birthday cake for our party with friends back in Phoenix! It's based off of the original NES Super Mario Bros world. The castle is one of the early level castles. It's red velvet with caramel icing and little caramel battlements. The "grout" is pocky sticks, and the dirt is brown sugar.
The Goombas (mushrooms) are spice cake mini-cup cakes with M&M dots. Didn't get a chance to do angry eyebrows or little fangs. The special ability cupcakes are also spice cake mini-cupcakes with cream cheese frosting covered in colored sugar and M&M dots.
( Click for larger overall shot of mushroom army... )
