Meet Marianna ......

Hello friends.  You may have seen a few videos on YouTube involving wrapping a doll in plastic wrap and creating a papier mache bodice for an art dress?  Well, I looked at them and thought, hmmm, wonder if I could make a dress using the Tim Holtz dressform die for the base.

So let me introduce my very first art dress, she's very classy and I've called her Marianna,

I cut two of the dressforms from some mountboard then cut one of them in half lengthwise and attached these halves at right angles to the second dressform (does that make sense) so it was a 3D dressform which stood up nicely. I painted this white then I cut the bodice of the die several times from some nice shiny paper and folded these in half.  After glittering the edges I fitted about 8 folded pieces to make a nice curved bodice and then curved the edges.  Once that was done I set about making the underskirt with tulle - I used white but I think pale pink would have stood out better.  I just gathered the tulle with a running stitch and glued it round the dressform leaving a gap at the front where the paper skirt will fit in.

A layer of gathered wide lace site on top of the tulle and then this was decorated with pearl trimmed narrow lace.  The lovely folded bit at the front was done with music paper trimmed with pink lace and then glued in tiers into the space left by the other layers.  Much easier to do than it sounds and there's a video here if you want to see it for yourselves.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NVwBXujDz0

After fixing some roses at the waist and a little heart locket, I wanted to do some more with the back.  Here it is.

I fan folded a piece of cream paper and covered the back of the bodice with it before sticking in some pearl hatpins - it reminds me of the high Elizabethan collars.  You can also see the stand on this picture which makes quite a sturdy base for the dress.  Well I hope you like this - I really enjoyed making it and can't wait to make another one.

Thanks so much for popping over - I really appreciate your visit and any comments you might kindly leave me, they mean a lot.  Margie x