Not seeing a Scroll to Top Button? Go to our FAQ page for more info. Northbrook Designs: Painting the Roses Red–done

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Painting the Roses Red–done

What a ton of fun making these guys. I am so happy with how they turned out. There is a lot more to these card soldiers than meets the eye. OR, it’s just me and my fussing around. Either way, I love projects that have details that you don’t see right away, projects that challenge me to do something a little different. That’s probably why it took me longer than anticipated.

The first example is the cap sleeves. Because I did 4 of these and used different fabrics, I thought it would be fun to alternate the fabrics for the caps. One fabric matches the body, the other is one of the other three and so on. When folded over on the shoulder you get to see the underside fabric. Even though the shoulder caps don’t really show, when you see them in real life, they are a great finishing detail to the shoulders.

For the faces, rather than make them all looking in the same direction, I had two looking left and two looking right. On the top of the hat, I added a big black hexagonal style bead, a gold spacer and finished with a silver seed bead. The hair is two colours of mohair locks, needle felted on.

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I used the silver seed bead on the hats, because on the back of the soldiers, I had to find a way to add a hanger. I didn’t want to add a tie of some kind but I knew I would have something that would be the perfect touch. Janet had these perfect little pewter  tea themed push pins that I bought a while ago, thinking ahead I suppose to Alice. They made the best hangers. I punched a hole in the hard board and glued the tea pots on, so that the handles could be used to hang on a picture hanger or nail. Aren’t they just so much fun.

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A full view of the backs.

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And here they are individually. The paint pots I made for them, came courtesy of the $ store. They were a strip of paint pots for kids, filled with water based paints. I scooped out the paint, repainted the insides with a coat of red paint, added the wire handles and snapped the lids closed. The brushes are older ones from my painting days. On the tips I made a bit of a paint drip using crystal lacquer and then painted red.

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The last part of the puzzle was how to display them at Janet’s shop. So I got this brilliant idea of using a canvas board. I figured out a way to secure some hangers on the canvas and now they are all together on that and it stands nicely inside the cubby holes I use to display my dolls.. What a fun fun project. I hope you find a project to do that give you that same joy.. The link to Christine Shively is on the first post about these card soldiers if you are interested in making them.

On to the next item on my to do list. Enjoy…. ;o))

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2 comments:

  1. They are so cute Romona. I love their faces:)

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  2. Oh they are absolutely adorable Ramona. Now looking at them I want to do these guys but it probably will my design. Let's see if my brain cells wake up after a long hibernation lol

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