A Homespun Year...Bowls and B necklaces.....

Honestly the things a Mother has to do...

My daughter studies Dance as a subject at school, and this is in addition to Studio Dancing.

Chorography and interpretation of music is part of her studies and she has an assessment coming up, where she has decided to depict the life of the ill-fated Anne Boleyn, one of the six wives of King Henry VIII.

Anne Boleyn was just one of the wives beheaded for not producing a male heir, but whose only daughter, rose to the throne as Queen Elizabeth I. Oh the irony.

If you've read Phillipa Gregory's books, or seen the movie The Other Boleyn Girl, you may be more familiar with the fate of poor Anne Boleyn.

So it falls to Mothers, as always, to produce a costume for the dance under discussion, and this with 3 days notice (so an online bargain purchase is out of the question), and a request that the costume resemble as closely as possible, the one worn by Natalie Portman, seen above, when she played the role, with Scarlett Johanssen as her sister, and Eric Bana as King Henry.

More recently, the role has been played by Natalie Dormer, also known as Queen Marjorie from the Game of Thrones series. She's seen above, alongside a portrait of Queen Anne, and as you see, this necklace is featured prominently.

Thinking quickly, I decided to buy some air-drying clay to fashion the B initial, and the teardrop beads attached. I have some pearl paint and some metallic gold paint on hand, so I'll be painting these to suit, once they're dry.

I rolled a small ball of the air-drying clay between two sheets of Baking Paper, and inscribed a block initial on top of the top sheet, using a pen. This imprinted into the clay underneath, and gave me a shape to carve. It's not perfect, but it works.

I used a skewer to poke holes to attach the top of the B to a strand of fake pearls, and poked three more in the bottom to give me a way to attach my fake teardrop pearls. I'm not exactly sure how I'm achieving that result yet, but it will come to me!

The teardrop pearl beads were shaped around a skewer as you see here...



....again, not perfect, but good enough to use for costuming.

Here is the B and the beads, drying.

I'll share the finished product tomorrow as I now have to paint them.

 

Update: You can see my finished B necklace and Anne Boleyn costume here.

So, thwarted by not being able to progress this any further until the clay has been painted, I took the lump of clay left over from trimming, rolled it out again between the parchment paper, shaped it into a more oblong shape, and formed this leaf. The veins were imprinted using a skewer...

By placing the leaf in my hand and curling my palm and fingers, I was able to form a sweet curved shape, and turn my leaf into a trinket bowl....



...I still have an enormous block of clay to play with, so I think I see more trinket bowls, and some clay gift tags coming up.

Fun!

Five Star Frou-Frou is now a neverending linkup with a featured blogger each time I post.

Todays featured blogger is....

Leigh at A Chat Over Coffee, who shared her delectable No Cook Mocha Cheesecake Parfaits. I cannot wait to try these!

Thanks Leigh, and thanks to all who continue to link...xxx

...Mimi...