INTRODUCING......SYMONNE

Not one to sit idle when the creative juices are flowing, Cori and I started in on a new concept for a dress form almost immediately after finishing up Maebel (the lemon/fabric) dress form.  We wanted to created a very vintage looking dress form, and looking around the garage, found some brown painter's paper.  I went about tearing it up into mismatched small pieces and then broke out the Mod Podge and started brushing away.  We completely covered the form from head to base in the brown paper but knew she would need a little "something something" to make her special.

Cori has a gazillion ideas tucked away, not only in her creative brain, but in stacks and stacks of magazines.  She remembered seeing a belt that was made out of burlap binding which is normally used in reupholstering.  To the binding, we tea stained a couple of thin muslin towels, and then cut them into 4 inch strips making use of the already finished edge.  Gathering it up in a running stitch, we ruffled the towel and adhered it to the underside of the binding with liquid stitch.  We cut two more strips for the tie, and attached two large wood buttons as an accent on either side of the belt.

We then thought about what type of graphics to put on her, and came up with this lovely graphic which tied in the red from the belt.  Add "Paris" to the chest and a date we took from the business graphic and we were ready to glaze her.  Traditionally, with the music sheet dress forms, we have used a copper glaze, but as I said before, we truly wanted an old, vintage feel to this dress form, so we went to our stand by glaze in the garage, Ralph Lauren Faux Glaze tinted in Espresso Bean brown.  With the first wipe of the glaze, we knew this would be the perfect finishing touch to this dress form.  It almost makes it look like it was made out of solid wood that has been aged for years and years.

We don't have a home for Symonne yet, but she will be listed on line at Cori's Etsy shop here.  She will also reside in one of our two spaces at the consignment store, that is if I don't decide to kidnap her myself for my living room at home.  I have completely fallen head over heels in love with this one, from the vintage door knob top to the cute belt, down to the vintage graphic which she has front and back!