Doll Stand for Wednesday Addams

Here is the design that I'm shooting for. My commissioner came up with the idea, I added the little pebble walkway.

First thing I needed to do was to create the doll stand for Wednesday. I used black galvanized wire.

Once I had the shape I wanted, I covered the part of the wire that will be exposed with black yarn.

Then I covered the yarn with fabric stiffener mixed with black paint and smoothed down the fuzzies. :o) Some yarn is nice and smoother and others are kind of frizzy.

Once this was dry, I bent little nooks into the wire base so that I could screw it down to the wooden bottom.

Then I secured it to the base using brass screws. These little screws are so hard to find. I need to remember to add this to My Own Honey-Do List so that I don't forget.

Next I started the tombstone. The original drawing, I had a cross on the top, and with this commissioner, I try not to make any decisions without running them by her, but I needed to move forward today and usually don't hear from her until late in the evening. So I removed the cross from the top because I was worried about the structural issues and put the cross into the design on the tombstone.

That's a piece of floral tape wrapped around it. There is a wire stand being glued to the back, and I didn't want it to move until it was dry. I'm using e-6000 so it will be a while until the piece is ready to handle. This is going to go into the oven, and to be honest, I'm not sure how the e-6000 is going to work. I know I shouldn't heat it, but hopefully the heat isn't too high and it will be ok.

Both are attached to the wooden base now with screws. Don't mind the pattern on the wood. I have been drawing on this piece for a while now and it's the only piece of wood I have that's the right size and shape for this project.

The ground, cobblestone walk and dirt pile has been added. The walkway looks shiny because the paint's still wet. The piece is in the oven now. In this picture it hadn't been baked yet. I like to paint the base coat before baking so that the heat will help to set it. Once the whole thing has cured and cooled, I'll dry brush greens in certain areas to make it look like grass, and browns in others, as well as grays on the stones.

All the painting has been done. I hope the commissioner likes this! :o) One more pic below.

stats:
base: 5 hours
price: $50
doll: 24 hours
price: $85
shipping & handling: $7.90


image source: http://chibitude.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=29