The Fairy Wedding Dress ~ hiding inside a little Altoids tin!

You are invited to a very special Royal Wedding….

 

No, don’t get excited. It’s not a delayed in the post invite to THAT wedding, because THAT wedding happened a week ago.   This is a different wedding altogether! 

❤  ~  ❤  ~  ❤

I’ve been trying to share this Fairy Wedding Tin for the last week,  and … well life got in the way and the rest is history.  But here I am now, doing the sharing!  Whoo hoo!

Chatting with another blogger, (Gillyflower)  in comments on my  last Altoids (size) Tin Transformation (<– clickable link)   a couple of weeks ago,  I told her that I had plans for a Fairy Themed Tin …. and began it straight away.  So this is me, sending you an invitation to come and share the secret of the tiny, all handmade (by me), ‘Fairy Wedding Dress hidden inside a Tin’!

Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?

The Front of the Altoids size Tin is the first page of a three page ‘book’  which is an introduction to what’s inside the tin!

The front of the tin is the beginning of the story.  There are another two pages to the ‘book’, which are held closed by a small hidden magnet.

It says:   The Fairy Prince asked the Fairy girl to marry him, and she said ‘Yes’!  So with lots of excitement, a Fairy Wedding was planned.  With the finest silk spiders put to work, spinning the finest webs to make the finest Fairy Wedding dress.  On the opposite page is a tiny sketch of a wedding dress.

Then …  you open the tin to see the Wedding Dress of the Year (well, almost), which was all hand-made by Cobwebs.  er …. using Cobwebs …  ah,  no … er,  umm  ….  aw… just open the tin!

I wanted to do a fancy arty type of photo.  Black and white, but the dress and tree in colour.  Not sure it’s worth the effort, but it was an enjoyable few minutes of play-time.  😀

All the papers you see lining the inside of the little Tin are Graphic 45 ~ Fairy Dust.

The bodice of the Wedding Gown was made from lightweight, air dry clay.

That’s an English Penny you see at the base of the tin, in the centre.  An English Penny is (roughly) the same size as an American penny.

The tin measures 9cm tall,  and 6.cm wide, which is approx or just over  3.5″  in inches tall and 2.36 inches wide,  and it’s just over three quarters of an inch deep.

The Fairy Ballet Shoes you can see hanging from the knob, next to the mirror, are also made by me, and are roughly about a third of the size of a penny.

The dress isn’t dangling on the floor of the tin, as it looks in that last photo.  I can actually put my finger between the ‘grass and flowers’ and the bottom of the wedding dress … which you can see in the next photo .  .  .

… can you see the grass and flowers beneath the dress, in the above (bit fuzzy) photograph?

The dress is festooned with soft pink and red flowers, with bits of greenery here and there.  It has a sparkly ribbon around the waist, and a petticoat made from white cheesecloth fabric.   The skirt of the dress is topped off with two layers of pure white, fine, Tulle. The shoulder straps on the bodice are satin.

The tree which the dress is hanging from was made from a Pine twiggy bit which I found in my garden, which has been drying out for weeks in my craft room.  I didn’t have any plans for it at the time I picked it up (and thanked nature for it), but I knew I’d use it in some way, and ….  this Fairyland Wedding altered Tin is the perfect place!

I really enjoyed making this lovely altered Tin, and would love to make one like it again at some point.  But making a different sort of dress next time.  I have a million thoughts about what sort of dress and how it might look.  But … this tin was quite an intensive make.  All stops, starts and stops again, as I waited for bits of things to set / dry etc, – and I will freely admit that patience isn’t one of my strongest virtues.

 

Anyhooo  … that’s me done and dusted for this lovely Monday. I’m so glad that I finally got to sorting the photos out, and getting to share this Altered Tin with you.

I’ve spent the weekend just gone, trying to catch up with other peoples blog posts that I’ve missed.  Now I think I’m up to date …. but just in case my ‘Reader’ is telling me porky pies, and I’ve missed a blog post of yours, please do let me know in a comment so that I can come and catch up!

Thank you so much for coming, and for having a coffee moment with me.  I love seeing you here.  I’m sorry I’m sometimes missing in action – I have some health issues which are being a proper pain in the ‘you know where’. (not literally, you understand.  I have no problems with my ‘you know where‘).  But …  let’s not bother about the health issues, for they are like dragons.  They’re only scary if you think about them too much!  So we won’t.  😀

As always. . .  I love your company and love to chat with you, so please feel welcome to comment.  Let me know what you think.  Let me know what’s going on in your life.  And … if you’re in the United Kingdom, then today is a Bank Holiday – so let me know what you’re planning to do with this day off work (if you have the day off work – ’cause some folks aren’t able to.).

Have a magnificent Monday, whatever you’re doing, and a truly blessed, wonderful week.  Sending much love to you ~ 

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Come with me, and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination . . .

That was the first line of one of my most favourite songs from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Last week I shared with you an altered, little Altoids (mints) sized tin for which I’d created a ‘Little bit of Dorset in a Tin’ – which was a [sort of] diorama inside a tin.

If you missed the blog post I paste a link here:-   A little bit of Dorset in a little Tin – which, if you click on it, will open up in a new page for you.

I created that little tin for a friend of Mr.Cobs, who’s coming for a visit in a few weeks time.

Mr.Friend told Mr.Cobs on the phone that he rather fancied a trip to somewhere called Brownsea Island  –  which is here in Dorset where we live, but it’s an island all by itself and you have to board a boat to get to.

I wanted to make Mr.Friend something of a souvenir but couldn’t think of anything about Brownsea Island which I could work into a souvenir, so instead, I chose a famous lighthouse here in Dorset,  – and the Little Tin I shared last week had Portland Bill  Lighthouse inside the Little Tin.

Funny thing was …  two days later, just as I was dropping off to sleep in bed … a stray thought popped into my mind which woke me up, and in that moment a plan formed.  That plan is the little bit of fun that I’ve come to share with you now.

Brownsea Island is probably most famous all around the world for the ‘invention’ of the Scouts, for Brownsea Island is where is all began.  My sleepy brain remembered this and led me to an idea which would be the perfect thing to give Mr.Cobs Friend, instead of the Portland Bill Lighthouse!  So …  this is what happened after the brain cell gave me the vision. . .

The English penny in the above photo, (to the left, at the bottom)  is for a kind of size reference.  It measures roughly 18mm and so almost the same size as an American dime

I thought that perhaps I could do a little research and see if I could find any details about what the first Scout boys had used by way of tents – style and colour etc.  I found enough information to tell me to make the classic upturned V style of tent, in a kind of khaki colour, and that’s what I created from some clay.

A close up of the ten, showing the flap gently blowing in the breeze.  The ‘guy rope’ is held securely to a tiny wooden tent peg, and I made the Union Jack Flag from paper.

I wasn’t absolutely sure that the tents would have been this Khaki colour – but it seemed right and looked so right that I was convinced that it had to be so.

 

The purple rule is showing the measurement of the tin, in centimetres. There are roughly 2.5cm to an inch.  So:  the tin is 9cm tall, and that would mean that it’s 3.54″ in inches.

The tree in the tin is made from a twig which was found in my back garden.

I built the campfire from some broken twigs which I’d found in my garden at the end of last summer, and had dried them out and kept them in my craft room, waiting for the right project.  Ahhh …. don’t you love it when you plan for something –  that you have no idea about at the time, – but when it happens …. YOU’RE READY FOR IT!  😀

The Camp Fire

I thought that all the best scout camps would have a lit fire, cracking, sparkling and sending up smoke signals which floated tiny bits of burning embers up, up, up into the sky ….  so I built a camp fire exactly as I’d expect to see one!

I think that the most difficult part of this little Diorama Tin was the Red Squirrel you see hiding in the tree.  Made from clay, it took me three ‘goes’ before I got the size right.

Can you see the red squirrel?

The red squirrel is the UK’s only native squirrel species, and was once a common sight across the UK. But for decades they’ve been in decline in the UK, and today,  red squirrels are sadly absent from most of the UK,  affected by the spread of the introduced non-native grey squirrel.

The Pine woods of Brownsea Island are home to one of the few remaining red squirrel populations in England.  Naturally because of this, I had to include a red squirrel in the tin!

I added a little pull out booklet to the inner lid of the altered tin . . .

When pulled out, it tells the story of how the Scouts began . . .

I so enjoyed making this Little Tin.  It wasn’t a quick make by any standards, but so very enjoyable and once it was eventually finished, I felt as if I’d been smiling for days and days.  Such a fun make.  But then….  as we all know ….  I do like to make Little things.  lol.

Thank you so much for coming and having a coffee moment with me.  It’s so lovely to see you here and I really do appreciate you coming.

I take this moment to say hello to some new followers that have joined us.  I won’t embarrass anyone by naming names, but will say ….  I hope you find something(s) to enjoy here in the Cobweborium Emporium, and that you eventually pluck up the courage to say hello in a comment.

Remember … until someone sees you here, we can’t click to come and see you on your blog if you have one!  So please, don’t be shy.  No one bites here, and we’d all love to meet you.

I hope your Monday has been fabulous, and that the weather, where you are, is such that it leaves you smiling.

And … now that we are near my signing off …  remember the song I began singing right at the start of this blog post?  Well …. I include the song, and a click for you, if you fancy a listen and a bit of a read:

Dorset Wildlife Trust   <– CLICK.  A thoroughly lovely website (will open up in a new window for you) which has various pages of loveliness for you to look at.  Hover your mouse over the various sections of the black bar across the top of the page (just under the Title: Dorset Wildlife Trust) and each section will open up a little window so that you can click on any of them to have a read.

Have a truly blessed rest of your day my friends  ~

 

A little bit of Dorset in a little Tin!

Those of you who have known me for some time,  know that I love working in ‘little’.  I love the quirkiness of making little things, and I’ve made things in tins before and posted them on the blog here, but not very often.  However, just as the world turns, I’m kind of coming back to tins again. I first began making things in tins about 25 years ago, (obviously I was only … ooo…  erm ...  two and a half at the time – cough-fibber-cough), and I remember the Master Craftsman – who was teaching me to sculpt in clay –  commenting many times that …  “… It’s all in the details with you, Cobs, isn’t it!”.  He noticed something that had never occurred to me – but once he said it, I could see that indeed, it really was!

Will you open the box …. or will you take the money?!!!

But anyhoo …. Mr.Cobs has a friend who lives back where we used to live – (someone Cobs Snr. used to work with) – who comes and visits every now and again, and both of them go out and make a day of having jolly fun together, eating, visiting places of interest, and generally doing what lads like to do.  Well, Mr.Cobs Friend is coming in a few weeks for a visit, and I got to thinking that here I was, making things for __________ (fill in blank space), but I’d never made anything for him.  So I set about thinking of what I could make him which would be a memory of Dorset (where we now live).

I know that when he comes to visit this time, Mr.Cobs and he have made a plan to get on a boat and go over to Brownsea Island.  Now … I will freely admit that since we’ve lived in Dorset, I’ve had absolutely no inclination to visit the island.  I will sometimes sit in the harbour on the mainland, with a coffee, and get the binoculars out to have a bit of a nose at what’s going on around the island – but have never wanted to go.

Brownsea Island – circled to make it easier to spot.

When I found out the chaps planned to go there, I thought I could make something relating to Brownsea Island, as a surprise for Mr.Cobs Friend, which he could take home.  BUT . . . after doing some research I was stumped about what on earth I could fit into a little tin Diorama,  which would be interesting, but also decorative, if he and his wife wanted to display the gift. which related to Brownsea Island.   Nothing.  My brain gave me either a red squirrel or a tree.  No.  Those wouldn’t do at all!

Brownsea Island – A link to the National Trust Website –  if you’d like to see/read about the island.

So I had to think about other places which might be on the agenda for another time, and Portland Bill Lighthouse popped into my head.  The more I thought about it the more solid it became – so …. I made it.  Well …  I made an artist’s impression of just the actual lighthouse.  It does have a cottage building attached to it – but I chose not to include that as it would have made the tin too crowded – so just made the lighthouse itself, from lightweight clay (so that the tin remained light in weight) – adding the windows, door, the ‘foghorn’ sounder on the side …  and the railing around the walkway which runs around the big lamp at the top.

I set the lighthouse atop of some ‘Portland rock’ – well, an artistic impression of it anyway. 

Portland Stone is a limestone which has been used for centuries and can be seen in many buildings such as St. Paul’s Cathedral and Buckingham Palace.  (you can read more about this on Wikipedia by clicking  HERE)

Behind the lighthouse you can see a section of map which shows the position of Portland Bill Lighthouse,  and on the inside of the lid [of the tin] is a little bit of information relating to Portland Bill Lighthouse.

For anyone interested in reading more about Portland Bill – I offer two clickable links:

Trinity House  – a website which gives information about a lot of the Lighthouses here in the UK – but this link will take you directly to the Portland Bill page.

Wikipedia – Portland Bill – a short read.

You can just about see the flag waving in the breeze, on top of the Lighthouse – it’s the British Red Ensign, which is the flag used by civilian vessels.

The tin is roughly the size of an Altoids Tin – at (approx) 95mm x 60mm x 20mm (ish).  And …  the lighthouse isn’t flat backed (which it seems to look in the photos).  When I created it, I made it completely round from base to top.  So when you look at it, you can turn the tin a little, and see around to the back.

Ohh…. and yes, those really are teeny tiny,  real  sea shells in front of the tin!  So delicate and so pretty.

Well, that’s what I’ve been up to in the last few days, in my newly painted craft room.  I’m still in a bit of a fiddle with the organisation – but my fingers were itching to make and create, so I left everything as it was, and instead sat and made something.  I could stand it no longer!  (A gals gotta do what a gals gotta do!).

Thank you so much for coming for a visit.  I love to see you here.  Do let me know that you’ve been and shared a coffee moment with me.  I love to know who I’m talking to – so just say ‘hello’ in a comment if you can’t think of anything to say, and I promise I’ll say hello right back!

Wishing you a truly blessed Monday and a happy week ahead.  Everything here in Great Britain is gearing up for the Royal Wedding in a week and a bit’s time.  Flags and bunting are coming out all over the land.  It’s all looking very jolly!  Anything going on where you live?

Sending you much love and squidges ~