Thankyou's

To begin with, I just want to say a big thankyou to a few people. First off, to Julia, who sent me the fab bones, plates, moss and pieces of fabric (above) for my Gaius project, so thankyou very much!! They'll go great in my room! Also thankyou to Nikki, who my mum got the wonderful dragons head below off of!! I absolutley love it! And thanks to Kat too for my lovely jars and bottles!! I'm sure they will come in very handy!

I also managed to get a cheap but authentic looking table from ebay and put a few jars and bottles on it. Another thing I managed to find was some good looking gothic-like windows for my room. Finally, my mum kindly made a mini version of the Merlin spell book for me, which I think looks brilliant!!

Old, new and to do...

I thought i'd post about my projects of past, present and future as there is nothing new to report on the Gaius room yet. Except of course that one of my tables with benches has arrived which I will decorate later in the week!

Old

This is my Bridal emporium that my mum made for me for my birthday when I was about 13/14. I just thought i'd post some pictures to show you all as it's so pretty! I re-arranged it earlier today, while watching Project Runway (The new show i'm into!) and took some photos of it. Most of it was made or bought by my mum but I added a few bits when I first got it, like bridal books full of pictures of wedding dresses and also the strapless corset hanger I made out of paper clips (below).

New

This is my new drawing which is still underway as you can see :) As i'm Doctor Who crazy, I decided to draw a picture from one of my magazines as I was in the mood for sketching! It took me about an hour to do this bit as it's quite detailed and I hope to finish it, but knowing me i'll just leave it and never bother to get back to it! I would love to get it finished though!

To do

This here is my fashion project which I plan to do soon. I picked this Oscar De La Renta pattern out at the Creative Stitches and Hobbycrafts fair at the Brighton Centre 2 years ago. Never got round to doing it but hopefully will now! I plan to do the dress in red silk and have bright yellow lining so when it moves you should be able to see a flash of yellow. My mum wants me to scale it down and do a mini version for my little sister Lola but I don't know quite how to do that! A bit ambitious for me!

Frog in a jar...and a whole lot more

I'm so very happy at the moment! My bottles of potions and herbs are finished after 2 and a half days of making and experimenting and i'm really pleased with the results. They look great on my mum's (now mine, as is many other stuff! :) Thankyou mum!!) bookshelf too! To do it, I filled many jars full of things I could find, like fake moss, miniature flowers (from which I have cut off flowerheads and petals of some), herbs, lavender and lots of other random things my mum found in her workroom! I then decorated them with odd pieces of fabric, netting and thread. I will place everything in the room properly once I do it, as I would like things hanging up and on tables because this is only my temporary display. I still have other little props to add, but those will be put on my tables and around my room box.

I love the cauldron screne and my favourite objects are the frog in the jar (see if you can spot him!), the flowerhead jar and the cloudy blue potion bottle. Let me know yours!

We went to Hobbycraft today and got some foamboard which we will make the room box out of, and some bits for my mums project which she still hasn't started properly yet! :) I'll have to see if I can get her starting on it tomorrow as I doubt I'll have much else to do now until I get my window.

Just one cornetto...give it to meeeeeeee

Started making today!! I took some screenshots from the first episode of Merlin and decided I would start off small with candles. Took me quite a while as I had to figure out how I was going to make my main candlestick (highlighted in red below) but I thought it was an okay first try.

I also made this wall candle (above - original, below - mine) but mum says it looks like a cornetto!! :) So if anyone could give me any advice or tips on a better way to make this as well as the bracket that connects it to the wall, that would be great thankyou!

Here are the candles and how I made them -

For the twisted candlestick I made a circular base from brown coloured fimo. I then cut a length of florist wire and stuck it into my base and twisted a thin roll of fimo round it.

Next, I trimmed the wire leaving a little bit showing at the top and then made a smaller circle to go on top. I used the wire to make a small hole in the underneath of the small circle and then cut a thin roll of fimo to go on top of this circle and finally, created a stumpy little dripping candle to then go on top of that.

Once baked I put the top section on the stick and then superglued together to ensure it was secure. To finish off I dabbed copper coloured gilt on it. Fun but took me quite a while to do.

The main thing i'm stuck on is how to do the actual room, whether to do it in a room box or create my own room box out of wood...? Any ideas?

And for the objects on the many tables, I'm going to focus on doing lots of books, herbs, scrolls, potions and ancient medicines and ingredients as Gaius was a physician. May try some potion bottles and jars tomorrow.

My summer projects

So i've been thinking...I've got to find something to do over the summer instead of getting used to lazing around, so i've decided to start a couple of projects.

Last year I bought a pattern for a dress as well as some fabric but I didn't get round to starting it, so i've decided to try and get that done in the next couple of months.
I also will help my mum (whittakersminis.blogspot.com) out with her miniature projects and maybe even start my own. After seeing the things my mum has made using her favourite films as inspiration, I thought it would be great to make Gaius' chambers from the BBC's Merlin series as I love that show and have been very interested in Arthurian legend since I was little. It'll probably be rather difficult and challenging as my first proper independant miniature project but I'd love to give it a go!! Or maybe even Arthur's or Morgana's chambers! Will have to look into it and decide which is the most appropriate to do!

Gaius's Chambers

Morgana's Chambers

Would also love to do Merlin's Camelot Servant Robes as they're brilliant!!

Will update tomorrow with more ideas and pictures.

Hello Bloggers!!

Hello bloggers!! I thought I'd create my own page after looking at my mum's and sister's and it looks like something fun for me to do! I will probably update every few days on my life, fashion, interests and more.

A quick update on whats going on with me so far:

I have just finished a 2 year National Diploma Course in fashion at Northbrook and am due to start a Fashion BA(Hons) Course in September at Epsom University!

My final grade for my college course was 3 distinctions (DDD) which I was VERY pleased about!!!

For my final project at college (called Elegant Armament) which I got a Merit for, I chose to research Medieval armour and Dress to use as inspiration, as it is something I have been interested in since I was young. To get good reliable research, I looked through books and visited historical places like the Tower Of London. I then used the pictures I had gathered to create ideas for fashion designs using processes such as model and drape, transferring elements from research pictures onto the mini mannequin and then into my design develpoments. I took the two subjects of armour and dress and amalgamated them to design a modern and sophisticated womenswear collection. Finally, I looked into contemporary fashion collections like Reem Acra Prefall 2010 and Jen Kao 2010 rtw to help bring a modern aspect to my designs.

I then chose one of my designs and made it out of 9m of Mulberry coloured silk jersey, pleating 2 separate lengths of fabric and sewing them onto the hips, to create the armour-like element to my dress.

So enjoy my posts and if you would like to ask questions or comment on posts, please feel free!