Saturday is Project Day

So it seems that Saturday has kinda become 'project day'. This little task has been waiting for me for a while now, and when I finally got the 'missing piece' this week, I was able to put it all together.

This is one of my vintage ring display stands. Bad photo of the rings, so here's a close-up.

So anyway, when I bought this one-and they are very hard to find-it came with a second metal frame and piece of black velvet, but no backing board or stand. And of course the existing one is timber, so impossible for me to duplicate (I'm a little bit handy but not that much). The 'missing piece', i.e. something for the rings to sit in, came to me in the form of a simple piece of purpose-made foam. Joy!

I sell at vintage fashion fairs, amongst others- clothing, jewellery, handbags, vanity items, hats, shoes, etc. And good display props are always an issue. New ones are everywhere, but they're usually crap, and they look it. Solid, vintage props are something I'm always on the lookout for-they look far better and are much better quality, but are rare, expensive and highly sought after. But I digress.

So after cutting a backing piece of cardboard and cutting the foam to size, I marked the back of the velvet with tailors chalk so I knew where to cut holes for the rings.

Stuck it all together, and voila! Not bad, huh? The only difference is, the 'new' one has no stand, so it'll just get propped up against something or will sit on a plate stand.

 

Second project of the day, a cute little 1930s velvet skullcap hat which I picked up last week with the intention of revamping.

  

Very plain. So I reshaped it a bit first, then dug through my box of spare hat decorations and found a couple of feathers, which I glued on and left to dry overnight.

 

Don't mind my work-desk background, will you! Heh heh. Then I found this broken jewellery piece. I keep all sorts of bits like this for just these sorts of projects.

 

Next I sewed the feathers down, then sewed the brooch on. Yay! A cute hat, revamped in a style thats in keeping with its era.

  

It will look better once its had a final steam, deodorise and reshape, but I won't do that until just before it gets sold.