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:

Bookbinding - in general

I finally managed to find a few spare hours to get rid of some paper from my "let's buy it, I might need it for a book"-storage and do some bookbinding again, after years. Well, actually I snatched a few spare hours when I should have been doing something else, but honestly, what's one supposed to do when time's always short? And promptly I discovered why I had taken so long a break from bookbinding: a few hurdles that still needed useful hacks. So here's what I found very helpful in an art where every millimetre has to fit and you can't allow yourself even the tiniest flaw that will in half a minute ruin a book that you have spent hours preparing.

The first book I made was a rather simple one in blue and white. The only reason: I could only find the blue-and-white headband, and as I said, with my books, every minute detail has to match...

The spine is covered in linen, the front and back in high quality Italian art paper. At the front, I decided to add some trim along the line where linen and paper meet. This is a nice way of covering up accidential glue blotches, but in this case I did it just because it looks nice. Just don't apply too much glue to the ribbon, and don't use glue that's been thinned too much. You'll end up with glue soaking through the ribbon and showing at the front. In which case you can use a contrasting, thinner piece of ribbon to cover up those blotches and add some additional colour accent...

Do, in any case, glue the end papers to the body of the book *before* you glue the bookmark and the headband, as you will have to cut the coloured paper to the measurements of the book and they will be in your way. So, end papers first, then bookmark and headband. Best would be to glue the end paper even before you have the rough-cut paper trimmed, but as I usually don't know beforehand what paper I'll be using for the cover, I have to do the second-best thing. So, glue the first end paper, trim it to the exact measurements of the book, then glue the second end paper and trim it. This way you'll never have anything in your way when cutting.

When you make the cover, mark the front end of the cover paper and fold it. It will facilitate quick orientation when the glue is on and you have to paste that sticky, curling thing to the cardboard. Put the slightly watered glue onto the paper first. The cardboard will soak it up too quickly to adjust the paper. When the front edge is in place, use a clean white paper napkin or a piece of white fabric to smoothen it over the cardboard and avoid wrinkles. The folding bone is too hard for this and will leave marks.

And when at last, in a great and risky finale, you're ready to attach the cover to the book, which means that you have to paste the end paper to the cover almost by instinct and ruin the whole book when this is not perfect, here's today's most clever find. Put the loose book into the cover and adjust it neatly. Then glue just the binding strips to the cover, very diligently on both sides. Let dry sufficiently with some plastic foil inserted to keep it from sticking to the end papers. Then, when it keeps in place, apply slightly watered glue to the end paper with a broad brush (not needing more than ten quick brush strokes at the very most is fine), having inserted waste paper between the paper and the rest of the book. Whisk out the waste paper and glue the cover to the end paper very diligently, trying to get even edges inside. Normally there's no glue now where it shouldn't be, so you don't risk glueing your book shut ;)

Usually you can loosen and re-position the paper up to three times if you're quick. Close and press the book evenly, open again and smoothen creases or bubbles using your clean napkin. Do the same on the other side, thank whoever you believe in if everything worked nicely, press the whole book over night and have tea to relax ;)

Or, as in my case, move on to the next book.

It seems I'm longing for the summer, as all my current designs are light in colour and summery in design.The second one is in shades of yellow with a print of yellow broom.

Wall stencils

So I'm moving. Again. And this time I'll be doing some serious painting, including stencilling. So far I've made up my mind on the design for one room out of four and prepared the design for lasercutting it from plastic - to be precise, from laminating film laminated without any paper inserted.

Works perfectly well and is cheap. I'm working in white on yellow (I admit, the yellow turned out a bit very yellow, but hey, I wanted a cheery, bright bedroom!) on two walls and in yellow on white on the other two.

Three important points for stencilling:
- Keep your measuring tape and your spirit level at hand when working a border.
- Never hurry. Better take a break and have a cup of tea.
- Don't use too much colour on your paint roller, the time you want to save will be spent double and triple correcting the stains.

And just when you've grown familiar with the work process and know what mistakes to avoid, you're done!

The stencils in the living room will be spray-painted. I was very successful when I sprayed the golden stars on my last flat's toilet ceiling, and as long as you keep the stencil close to the wall (use cardboard or secure the plastig meticulously, and cover the area around your motif well) you don't risk getting spray paint anywhere you don't want it.