Dress Form Tags and a Give Away

Dress forms, in all forms, are very much in vogue at the moment in scrapping. They hark back to the by-gone days of home sewing when mum would make clothes at home because they were to expensive to buy them from the shops.

They remind me of my mother teaching me to sew without a pattern, or by meshing two completely different patterns together, without tailor's tacks and basting and all very much to my sewing teacher's disgust.

I've never had a dress form though a few years ago I did buy a wire display form I bought so I could display all my ribbons (before anyone else thought it was a great idea) but which I have yet to add a single ribbon to. My friend Glenna bought me a matching mini dress form for my 40th... which is also just so cute... but once again I digress.

Last month I signed up for a dress form tag swap and then promptly forgot all about it completely... I'm sure my head isn't screwed on properly at the moment.

I saw some of the pictures others in the swap have posted, and thought to myself, "ohhh they are gorgeous, wish I was doing that swap." Then two days before the posting date I checked and low and behold there's my name on the list of participants. Oh bugger!!! Okay, let's not panic.

I calmly went down to the studio, looked at my dress form templates and chipboard die cuts and said to myself... "okay self, now what?"

All the other pictures showed dress forms attached to standard luggage tags but I decided to be different (no surprises there)... instead of attaching my dress form to a tag, I decided my tag would be the shape of a dress form. My logic was... I didn't have enough dress form chipboard die cuts of the same style for the size of luggage tag I had and the size I did have enough of, just looked too small against the tag. The template I had was also the size of the luggage tag so it really didn't make sense to then attach it to a tag which would virtually disappear completely. Hence... the approach I took.

So what did I do... (Sorry as it was a bit of a rush I forgot to take photos as I was speed scrapping to get them done before my trip down to Christchurch).

1. Traced around my template onto some recycled ice-block boxes
2. Cut out the dress forms by hand... if I had a die cut of a dress form I would have used that as it would've been much quicker but I don't so I went retro style!
3. Coloured the plain side of the dress forms using AMM - Caramel and Chocolate Paper Stain; and Tim Holtz Distress Inks - Mustard Seed, Vintage Photo and Fired Brick.
4. Stamped the all the dress forms with a collage of three small stamps - Making Memories - Great Escape - Icons, and two freebies from a magazine. I put all three stamps on the one block which made life so much easier. I used the Tim Holtz Walnut Stain Distress Ink for the stamping.
5. Spritzed the dress forms with Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist - Gold, Suede and Coffee Shop.
6. Adhered scrap cardstock onto the back of the dress forms, let the glue dry then trimmed the backing to shape. Next time I would do this step after the next step instead of before so as to hide the sewing.
7. Punched holes along the hem of each dress form then hand beaded fringing using embroidery thread with seed beads and bugle beads.
8. Adhered feathers (pulled off large black feathers keeping intact as much as possible) using glue dots. Each dress form has two feather clumps - one pointed up, the other down.
9. Misted some KaiserCraft Mini Paper Blooms (Buttercream) with Gold Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist, then attached using Elmer's Glue across the join in the feathers.
10. Adhered KaiserCraft self adhesive gold rhinestones to form necklace.

I love that each of them is different.

I love the way the glimmer mist muted the stamps images to make them look very vintage.

I love the colour scheme - but then I am an Autumn colour girl. (I have to say the photos just don't do them justice. In real life they are so much richer and warmer with more depth.)

I love the simplicity yet stylishness of the finished look.

I love the timeless look that can go with any theme of a layout.

I created these so that they can be added to a layout either as they are or with extra ribbon, flowers, bling extra added to blended them into the theme of the page.

Give Away - 

I also created an extra one, so I will be giving this away to one lucky person who leaves a comment on this post.  Let me know where or how would you like to use the tag if you were to win it and I will draw one lucky person to receive it. You have until Sunday 22 April 2012 to leave me a comment.