Ivory fan (restoration)

 
Another find from the flea market - a finely carved fan from what seems to be ivory, dating from I'd say at least around 1900 (and hence old enough to buy it with good conscience). The only thing that was broken is the clasp on the handle that would have held a decorative tassel or ribbon adornment and, being from tha same material as the fan, was broken with only half of it remaining. It will be substituted by a metal one as soon as I figure out where to get high quality fan supplies. What I could repair was the missing silk ribbon that would hold the leaves together. As I am in the process of beginning a silk-ribbon embroidered dress I happened to have silk ribbon at home, and after deciding which colour of ribbon would fit the ivory best I set out to buy twenty bottles of silk dye in all shades of the rainbow and dyed the piece a nice midnight blue. The rest to come for the dress... If you dye silk ribbon, you can either paint it, or dip it. If you want it perfectly saturated, either dip it, or go over it with a brush several times until every fibre has taken in the colour. I opt for dipping and hanging the ribbon to dry on a paperclip. Neat and tidy. Don't forget to iron it thoroughly, according to the instuctions of the dyes you're using.

If you repair the binding of a fan make sure to start right and work your way from the upper side of the fan downwards from behind to front, or from left working upwards, or else you'll never be able to close the fan properly or casually whisk it open with a flick of your hand - trust me, I learned it the hard way ;) The ends of the ribbon are secured with clear super glue. Bone glue would have been proper, but I'm certainly not starting to cook out bones in my kitchen...

Artificial glass grapes

As it's nigh to impossible to get artificial grapes made from glass or even acrylic, I decided to attempt making them myself. Luckily my favoured bead shop had purple glass beads on sale, in four different sizes, of which I bought a couple, and some green wire for the stems. I spent the evening creating a thoroughly acceptable bunch of grapes, did some calculation and rushed back to the shop the next day to buy the rest of the beads.

First you start by cutting pieces of wire, the first attempt was from fourteen inches growing one centimetre shorter each row, but this makes for a very bulky stem. In the second attempt I started with eleven centimetres for all of the grapes, which did not change much except that the stem is shorter and less bulky, but only towards the end...

So, cut your wire in regular pieces of your choice, then use a pair of fine pliers to bend one end and press it flat. You want the bead to get stuck at this thicker end without the wire-end showing (and without the bead cracking because of the wire-end being too thick), so it's a question of intuition and gentle manipulation. If it doesn't work at all, you can also add a drop of jewellery glue to the end before moving the bead over it to secure it.

Bend approximately 2-3 mm for the smaller beads, increasing for the larger ones.

Then arrange the stems and twist the wire to make up a stem. Start with five small ones, one as the bottom centre, joined by the other four as the first circle of grapes. Keep adding grapes in increasing sizes to make up a complete bunch.

I never cared much about what to do with the stem, as they're intended as decoration on my next baroque dress and the stems will be covered by foliage and ribbons anyway.

Yet another renovated box...

Yes, I admit, I have plenty of them, in all states of want of repair ;) The current aim is to get all the half-finished projects off the desk, so here's yet another finished piece.

Material is wood (in good state) covered in I think embossed cardboard (only partly in good state). The inside is lined either in embossed silk or high quality artificial silk which was to a great part in a very poor condition, torn and detached from the sides. Due to the fact that the inside of the lid was in perfect condition and it might be silk after all, I decided to leave it, give it a very good clean and repair what can be repaired; which mainly meant re-glueing the fabric to the sides (a line of book-glue along the top) and adding gold-coloured trim to distract from the fact that in some parts the silk is irreparably damaged.

I forgot to take pictures of the "before"-state, so here's just a glimpse of the process and a few hints for details.

I hardly ever use hot glue for repair works, due to a couple of facts: hot glue is not removable, it's never periodically correct, always visible in some way and it adds volume. Book glue is flexible, becomes almost invisible when dry and is actually removable with a little effort. The tricky thing was to hide the ends of the trim, the absolute perfection being that it takes a second or even third gaze to figure where the trim begins and ends. With cord and book glue it's easy: apply a small dollop of glue to the end and work it in gently with your fingertips until it starts turning transparent and dry. Now you can shape the tip to paintbrush-shape which vanishes nicely behind the similarly shaped beginning.

And you end up with a very neat interior.

The exterior involved still more glueing and pressing because the cardboard covers had turned stiff over time, and especially the corners were beginning to turn up. The whole thing seemed so dry to me that I rubbed transparent shoe wax (the real thing) onto the repaired plates and they turned out like new (except for the missing parts that need to be replaced).

Renovated jewellery box

 
Yet another find from a flea market - a gilt wooden casket in the shape of a book. One of the hinges was broken, and a lot of the gilding at the front and spine was missing. At first I intended to make this my first experiment in gold leaf gilding, but then found a very quick and neat solution: gilding cream. Means all the gold particles come already mixed with polishing wax and need only be put onto the surface. And excellent choice for small carvings for example. And a very quick one in this case, although I will have to go over it with a slightly darker shade to get some shading.

As this should become the countess' box for earrings, I constructed the same kind of foam thingy I used for the ring-box. This time the lid was flat inside, so I had to cut the foam a little shallower than the inside of the box.

The rest of the procedure is the same: cut, tuck, double-sided tape, and put in the bling ;) By the way, a good source for false but period looking historic jewellery is Nehelenia.

 

Jewellery box for rings

The fleurs de lys on the lid make this one the perfect ring casket for my french baroque character. And as a countess needs a lot of jewelry (here I want to emphasize that it's highly recommended not to use real jewelry on liveroleplays and reenactments - after all, you don't want to have your decoration's material worth on your mind all the time!) it was high time for a box to store all the rings.

The manuals I found for that kind of jewelry boxes were completely insufficient, as the ingredients used (hair rollers or cotton-pad-covered cardboard) didn't give the look and functionality I intended. My experiment worked on first attempt: take some not too soft kind of foam (I used some from a outdoor seat cushion) and cut it exactly the size of your boxes inside dimensions.

Then mark horizontal lines at regular intervals, somewhere between 1,5 and 2,5 centimetres, and cut them to 2/3 of the foam depth so you get slits where you can insert your rings.

And as you will not want uncovered foam in your elegant jewellery casket, find some nice, non-slippery fabric, wide enough to stuff the raw edges under the foam and about twice the length of your piece. It works best to cut an ample strip of fabric and trim the excess. Start from the centre slit and tuck the centre fold of the fabric into it to the very bottom. Open the next slit slightly by putting the foam piece on the edge of a table, ease the slit slightly open and tuck the next fold. The important thing here is to allow enough fabric to keep the square shape of the foam edges (which will nicely hold your rings) instead of rounding them too much, but not have excess fabric forming bubbles on the surface. When you've finished both sides, secure the edges of the fabric on the back side with double-sided adhesive tape and also tape the complete block into the box. You should end up with something like this: