Ok, I got some burlap fabric and made another skirt for my “work in progress” mannequin. I think it works alot better than the other skirt, I hope my customer does too:)

I sell some of my work at a wonderful shop in Mt. Sterling KY called “Finders Keepers”, tell James and Randy that Heather send you if you ever stop by:) And they have asked me to do a large commission piece for the shop and I thought I’d share some step by step of my process and when it’s complete I’ll post that here too.

 The item is a life size white plastic mannequin, from the thighs up to the neck, it’s only the front half, no back. They wanted it collaged and then a skirt and some embellishment added.

Here’s the plain mannequin:

Because it was so large I worked on it in a chair covered with an old towel, to catch the drips. I wanted to use large pieces of paper to cover as much area as I could at a time. All the papers I used are very old vintage papers from books, musics sheets, the cover of a music sheet and an old magazine cover. I used a foam brush and Mod Podge to apply the papers, it took nearly an entire large jar of Mod Podge to cover the whole piece in the end! 🙂 I would first mold a piece of paper to see where it would fit and how it would look, creasing and folding if need, this helps the paper remember the shape when you actually apply it. Then I covered the back of the paper with the Mod Podge and then also applied some to the mannequin and then lay the wet paper on, smoothing out bubbles and making it flat with my fingers. Then I applied another coat of Mod Podge over the piece of paper.

Here’s the first piece I glued down:

Then I just continued adding more:

Until the entire thing was covered, which took almost 4 hours:

They wanted the piece to look old and dirty so after it dried I used a large round sponge and added many colors of brown and yellow inks to really age it up:

Then I added a choker made from vintage lace and an old button:

I then tried my hand at the skirt, the most challenging part for me. I used some pretty fabric I had and loosely stitched around cinching it at the top and attached it to the piece, I used pinking sheers on the edges and frayed them too:

The skirt just doesn’t work though, it too shinny and new for the piece so I’m going to change it. Burlap was suggested so I bought some yesterday and will give it a try. I’ll let you know how it goes 🙂

Hope you enjoyed a little peek into my working process. I really wish I had taken a picture of my hands while working on this, they were covered in Mod Podge, it looked like my skin was peeling off, eeewww 🙂