Dress Up - September

Nine months into the year and I'm still playing along with the uber talented Margaret's Dress Up Challenge whereby all the participants make a dress for every month of the year.

I wanted to make this September 2010 dress special as this is a special month for me as I've just had my 50th birthday - there, I've said it (again)!!

So, this dress is all about me, me, me!!!  LOL.  After this posting, I promise there will be no more said about me reaching my half a century, getting old(er) or anything else relating to age - I'm sick of it, so expect you are too!

Back to the dress ...

The base is white cardstock which I coloured with Antique Linen Distress Ink, then rubber stamped a floral background onto (which is now completely hidden).  The shape is loosely based on my wedding dress - it had huge puffed sleeves and was very voluminous (just the way I wanted it).

I searched through the family photo albums and found the only half decent photographs of yours truly suitable.  The main image is of my wedding day (back in 1992).  In the middle is when I was a bridesmaid, probably about 5 years of age.  In the right hand corner is me as a baby.  The other corner is a school photo and the little snippet poking out from behind the bridesmaid is me at my shy-est, probably about 3 years old. (I still feel like that most of the time, even now!)

I photocopied the photographs on plain copier paper and stuck them onto the dress (using glue stick).  I inked around the edges with Antique Linen Distress Ink to make the whole thing a little more cohesive.

Now the fun part, out with the beeswax and the little quilters iron.  I melted the wax over the pictures and smoothed it out with the iron.  I had so many attempts at this I was worried the cardstock was going to disintegrate - but it didn't!

Once dry, I did a little random rubber stamping and highlighted some of the wax by brushing on a ittle Perfect Pearls (two colours, Perfect Gold and Heirloom Gold). 

This gave a lovely aged, but slightly sparkling effect (just like me, aged but slightly sparkling - LOL!)

I'm pleased with how this one has turned out - I think it is special, so it's hanging on the inside of the wardrobe door for now on display.  I actually managed to get all of the other dresses in the wardrobe together.

 Nine dresses down, three to go, I think there will just about be enough room in there for them!

I'm off now to go and look at all the other dresses for this month - Margaret has a Mister Linky widget on her blog.

Thanks for looking x

Playing Dress Up

I couldn't resist joining in with the challenge set by Margaret on her blog Alice and Camilla in which you create a dress for each month of the year - anything goes really.  Margaret has created a beautiful wardrobe for her dresses by altering a wooden cigar box - you can see it on her post here.  Her own dress for January is fabulous and she's set up one of those Mr Linky things on her blog so you can easily view dresses made by other players - and the ones I've seen so far are all lovely.

So here's my dress for January - which I think must belong to Cinderella as it's in quite a distressed, tatty state.  The card base of the dress I coloured with distress inks (dried marigold, scattered straw and frayed burlap).  There is some rubber stamping around the hem and the sleeves.  The apron is made from an old page of music and coloured in the same way.  There is an under apron of muslin and a lace edging on the dress.  As it's poor old Cinder's dress, she only has a piece of string to tie her apron!

Maybe as the year progresses, I'll make her a beautiful ball gown.  In the meantime I'll need to think about a dress for this month, February and also look out for something to make into a wardrobe (unfortunately, I don't know anyone who smokes cigars!)