Zibbet finds of the week - Wood

Oh, the things you can make from wood ... not me obviously, I only work with wood very rarely and then I don't really do something with it. I don't saw, sand, polish, or paint it.
Others do that and they are so good at it that I just have to share it with you!

Wood sign Spoiled Rotten Cats (mine?? ;-)) by KP Dreams

Large grog goblet by Big Bang Creations

Rustic handmade wood buttons set of six by Snap Vintage

Painted wooden bangle by Elrun Crafts

Wooden rattle teether duck by The Wooden Horse

Black ash burl inlaid in titanium band ring by Jewelry by Johan

Quote of the week

1930s England.
He's living and acting under a pseudonym. Albert Campion, a man from an aristocratic family, is not really a sleuth, but he helps people out with their problems, anyway. He's at home in the high class circles just as much as he knows his ways around the underworld.

This time he has to find out who wants to steal an invaluable family treasure, a chalice that is hundreds of years old. And not only is he always open for anything that might come his way, he tends to take things with humor, too.

Campion: I'm told on good authority there's a witch operating in the high street.
Penny: Mrs Munsey?
Campion: She didn't leave her card. Only a wax effigy and a couple of pins.
Penny: In the lady chapel of the church there's a list of witches put to death in 1624. Every other name on the sheet is Munsey.
Campion: Does Mrs Munsey live in the village?
Penny: About half a mile outside in a sort of hen house with her son. They're both simple, poor things.
Campion: I might pay a call. I've been having trouble getting hold of bats' wool and newts' eyes. I've tried Harrods, Fortnum's ....

Campion, UK, 1989 - 1990

Flower power Hippie time - Part 2, The accessories

Welcome back to the 60s! Today I'll talk about Francie's accessories. And her hair. Which is not quite an accessory.
Let me see, where were we. Right. Francie was dressed now. Have you noticed that there were no shoe problems this time? It wouldn't have been difficult to find shoes for this girl, I might even have something that fits in my little shoe box, but she chose to go barefoot and feel the grass under her feet instead.

What she couldn't do without was a tote bag, and the tote bag couldn't do without fringe. I'm the mad fringer, mwahahaaaa! I wrote about the tote before. The nice thing about a hippie outfit is not being forced to coordinate colors. That way I could use my bead soup and a color that didn't go with anything else so far to brick stitch this tote. I like to think Francie found it in a second hand store.

When I was a child, ball point pens still used to have that little metal ring in the middle where you could unscrew them to put a new ink cartridge in. Sometimes these rings were very thin, sometimes wide. It didn't matter, we used them all as doll bangles.
I had to use two large jump rings here instead.

Now it was time to do something about Francie's bristle head. The original vintage Malibu Francie had long blond hair and that's what I wanted to stick with.
The blond hair I have is called "Sunshine", a great name because it is really shiny.
After weeks of procrastinating I finally mustered the courage to go for it. Rerooting still doesn't come natural to me.
It wasn't easy to pull out the hair plugs and unfortunately Francie already had some small scalp splits, but I did my best to cover those up. I had blond hair everywhere and so did Ponder. He declined my offer to make him a little wig, by the way, but supervised my rerooting with a sharp eye as always.
Here's the result.

After brushing, setting the hair in hot water, giving her a trim and brushing again Francie looked like this. Almost done!

I had always thought I would make a headband as last accessory, but then I wondered if one of those floppy hats would look cool, too. My personal adviser aka my sister, however, had a different idea which I fell in love with right away. She said Francie needed a daisy chain. I had never made one before, but looked it up, and when I found I had beads in my stash that would work, there was no stopping me.
Isn't it perfect for her?

I hadn't planned to make a necklace, but then I was told there had to be a peace sign. Actually my first plan for the tote had been a peace sign pattern, but that didn't work in this size and I didn't want to make it any bigger. So it had to be a necklace after all. This was as small as I could make it with the beads I had. Any smaller and it looked like just a mess of beads. Yes, I tried this more than once.
First I used a copper tone ball chain for the pendant, but that was too big, so I finally settled for a simple chain stitch necklace.

Today I took Francie out to the garden for her first real photo shoot. There's a collage with more pictures at my deviantART if you want to have a look.
You know you want to sing "Let the sunshine in" now or how about "Aquarius"? ;-)

You missed the first post? Here you go!
Part 1, The clothes

Tackle that stash - Wire crochet hedgehog family

Even a few beads do count! In this case it's the hematite beads that I used for the noses and eyes of this little hedgehog family.

I don't see hedgehogs that often. Our little garden mostly consists of higher spots and pots and isn't very interesting for them. Sometimes when I walk to the train station really early, I see one of them crossing the empty road, though. They come from one garden and go to check out the next one.
The other day one was a little confused and struggled his way up the few stairs to the hairdresser's, but I guess he had forgotten his keys ;-) He came back down and disappeared around the corner instead.

These three are a little smaller than the usual variety, though ...

Flower power Hippie time - Part 1, The clothes

From the 20s to the 60s it's quite a time jump, I know. I can't even remember how I decided that I wanted to make a Hippie outfit, I just knew I wanted something completely different from the Flappers this time.
And different it is.

Francie, our lovely doll model this time, is from the Malibu series and was produced from 1971 to 1977. Instead of the regular Francie head she has the smiling Casey head.
This Malibu Francie had seen a very bad hairdresser, one who was even worse than me. He left her with a bunch of bristles on her head instead of a hairdo. Unfortunately that was at a time when I had given up on re-rooting after a few attempts to try other things instead, so Francie spent her life hidden on a shelf behind the door.
Then I re-found her, so-to-speak, and thought she would make a wonderful flower child with her happy smile.

Francie has yet another figure compared to the first two dolls. She is smaller than Barbie - whose cousin she is, by the way - and not as curvy, so I had to make a completely new pattern regarding the arm holes and the straps.

First I made the top. I went browsing tie-dye shirt images on the net and went for a swirly rainbow kind of design. I loomed front and back in once piece, re-wove the threads, sewed up the sides, and then I went totally overboard making a long fringe.

Next came the "leather" vest in a mix of two of my favorite brown bead colors. Other than the top the vest is removable. It has fringe around the top of the arm holes.

I took quite a long break before I tackled the skirt. All I knew was that I wanted to have some kind of denim color, that it was going to be long and wide and that I wanted to pick up the rainbow motif again.
Finally I decided to make it in four parts and sew them together. I used red thread for this to imitate decorative seams.
This was the hardest part. The all-blue parts were pretty boring to loom and instead of going faster because they were easier they almost destroyed my motivation. Joining the parts was okay, but then I had to decrease the top to make the skirt fit on Francie's waist.
At that point I knew it would have been smarter to make the skirt first. The fringe of the top kept getting in my way big time. With gritted teeth and lots of eyerolling I finally got it done.

Then I had the idea for a wide belt in brick stitch. The only problem was what to use for a buckle.
I didn't find a real buckle, but then I had another idea. Yup, sometimes they just roll in like that.
I took one of my toggle clasps and clipped off the little loop. Not bad, eh?

Now I had a complete outfit and only needed some more accessories ... and hair. That's what I am going to tell you about next time.

Oldies but goodies - Opal and opalite

I have always loved opals. When I looked at pictures of opals as an introduction to this post, I was ready to sit down in a corner and whimper. The colors, the varieties, the COLORS!
Black opal, jelly opal, milk opal, blue opal, pink opal, fire opal, boulder opals ... these are just names that really don't do much to conjure images of what that really means.
I remember getting a pair of opal earrings for Christmas that I had practically begged for when I was 18. I was so disappointed that one of them only showed a very small speck of color. For me opal was all about the ... oh wait, I had already mentioned that, I think ... colors.
Little did I know then about how spectacular opals could really be. Learn more about them here in this link.

To make this week's Oldies but Goodies Challenge at the Jewelry Artisans Community easier for the members, not only opal pieces were allowed, however.
In the collage you will also find opalites. Can you tell what is what? Don't forget you can click the picture to enlarge it a little.

1 RioRita
2 MC Stoneworks
3 Cat's Wire
4 Jewelry Art by Dawn
5 Violetmoon's Corner
6 Robins's Jewelry, Antiques, & Collectibles

P.S. Google "Virgin Rainbow opal" and read the story of that gorgeous rare opal. I wish there were more pictures to find, though. I saw it in a documentation and it absolutely blew me away! You are welcome to buy it for me, my birthday is coming up in June, you know ....

Zibbet finds of the week - I'm a collector #3

At the moment I am doing a lot of time traveling thanks to my portrait pendants, to my movie quotes and my doll projects. Only yesterday we took a little trip back into the 60s here on the blog.
It made me think that I haven't shared any vintage treasures with you in a while, so let's just dive back into time and see what I found, shall we?

Wouldn't these sunglasses be just perfect with a hippie dress?

70s sunglasses at Studio 2

It's amazing what you can do with vintage paper. This lot caught my attention not only because they are German book pages, but also because of the hair in the illustration on the right.
The text reads: "Wonderful growth of hair. A famous physician and chemist has found a remedy which makes hair grow on bald heads overnight. Doctors are speechless in the face of that amazing announcement."
Isn't it great?

Old German book pages at Jillian's Art and Dreamy Papers

I absolutely loved this board game. Of course I have it in the German version. Have you ever played it?

Vintage board game "Careers" at Scrap Pantry

The look of this alarm clock is still very familiar to me as well although I don't recognize the manufacturer.
It made me wonder if anyone still uses this kind of alarm clock for more than a beautiful decoration. And guess what, they do. That is why it is so important to know that those clocks - this is not the only beauty in the shop - do work and are as reliable as they were decades ago.

Vintage German alarm clock at Circe Collectables

I have never had sushi and I definitely never had fugu because I wouldn't have the guts, but these cups showing puffer fish are really nice, don't you think?

Sushi cups with puffer fish at Sassydoggs