Bust Form Reveal Day

A couple months ago, a few of us decided it would be a lot of fun to create or alter a bust form for displaying jewelry. You can see the original post here.

Lynne B made 'Eve'  - Lynne, be sure to email your address to me - I've got a little prize for you!   Isn't Eve fabulous?

The base is a piece of salmon cage (Styrofoam tube) that washed up into our intertidal zone (We get 28 foot tides.. so have lots of room for collecting intertidal shluck!) impaled on a turntable from a defective jewellery display.  The cover is all needle felted wool fibres.. I actually knitted the skirt and then felted it ... but it felted up rather than in.. so doesn't quite have the flow I envisioned.

When I originally decided to make this  Fall 2010 she was suppose to have three faces too  at the moment she has a totem of beads to hang the jewellery off.   I wanted something that I could put on the floor that would have enough neck to display pendants/ jewellery without having to hang half the necklace down the back of the mannequin.

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I decided to alter mine from a commercially available bust form.

It's really quite amusing just how many times I painted/podged/glued/spackled this thing.  The more I touched it, I have to say the uglier it became. I mentioned on facebook yesterday that my 6 year old said to me 'Mom, that's so ugly!'  So, off I went to futz around with it some more.


I originally was going for a patterned background that was muted with layers of tissue paper and mod podge. The end result wasn't muted, and horribly shiny. I then decided to age it using distress ink. Well, instead of the elegant aged look of being in a dusty attic - it looked like it was dug up from a dung heap. LOL

I repainted it, then added some texture by slapping on a ton of gesso. It still looked a bit boring, and needed something else. I found a jar of blue chalkboard paint, mixed that in with more gesso, spackled that on top. It's almost there now. I may still alter it a bit more as I'm not quite happy just yet.