Dome Top Casket

 Time to Paper the Outside!

Ahhh a pretty clean slate ready to cover with the embroidery or decoration of one's own desire. Are  you following this little casket's progress on You Tube? I hope so. I have come to realize that I think I love the finishing just as much...perhaps maybe a little bit more, than the embroidery itself. Well...maybe not, but they are a close tie. There are so many possibilities..if you have a lot of ideas and find it hard to pick one, well ask somebody else to choose for you and you can do the rest on other boxes! Above is a picture of the finished exterior papering, which is the focus of today's two videos. 

Yep, another two video day today. My camera angles are weird. Yes, I know. Sometimes Im out of the frame of view...Yes. I know. I am just me. It would be great if I had someone to hold the camera and follow me around and zoom in and out...but I don't. Just me.....and YOU, there in the camera coming along for the journey~ I do hope you enjoy and can take away a few little tips here and there to help in your own making ups.

I will be launching my own Thinkific Online Academy soon and will be offering some really great online classes that will include downloadable detailed finishing courses. So until then, I hope you enjoy today's two part video on exterior papering

Part 1~

Part2~

Finer Finishing Tips #7

 Wrangling That Paper!

Happy Saturday All! I hope you had a great week. If you are following along with the progress of my little dome top casket, this week's video is a birds-eye view of cutting the exterior paper before gluing. Everyone says matter of factly to glue paper on the outside of the box...but they don't really go over how to wrangle and cut that huge expensive sheet of paper. If you only have one or two sheets, it can be intimidating...especially if you are afraid of making a mistake and wasting it! 

Have no fear, Rachael is here to help guide you through it! As always, I do apologize for the angle of the camera in today's video. I changed it to an above view so you wouldn't see the back of my elbow like last week, but along the way, I think I knocked it out of alignment. If you ever had aspirations of being a bird and seeing what they see, well just imagine you are an inquisitive woodpecker hanging upside down on a tree branch while I'm wrangling this paper!

I wanted to share the photo above to show the finished fold-over of the paper on the lid. This is what can form the halo I talk about in the video. 

a TWO video day today!

 Gilt Stamped Edgings

It's time to finally start to paper my little dome-top casket.  I wanted to bring you all along with me so turned the camera on real-time as I applied my edgings. Before you write and ask me if I make and sell stamped paper edgings, the answer is no. Not at this time anyway. I have a list a mile long of things I need to get done~ I do link on one of the videos today to Talas where you can find a plethora of beautiful brass finishing tools, papers, and foils to make your own though. A pretty edge treatment doesn't have to be just a stamped paper though, it could be gilt with gold or silver leaf, or a pretty marbled or otherwise fancy paper!

 

Today is a two video day because the battery in my camera died partway through, and  I am still trying to figure out all this YouTube stuff. I have no idea how to put two videos together, and honestly, it is not in my brain capacity currently to try and figure it out. There is a hideous closeup of my elbow that I am both warning you about and apologizing for at the same time. I would have cut that out, which I know how to do, but I was talking at the time so all I can offer is, to just close your eyes for a few seconds!

I am planning on some very in detail interior finishing classes in the near future, so if you like what you see and want to dive into greater detail, just comment here or drop me a line at rlkinnison@yahoo.com and I will put you on the mailing list for future classes.

and Part 2....

Time for another Video!

 Finer Finishing Tips #5

 

This week flew by in a minute. I have been somewhat ´in the zone´ working on my dome top casket and can't believe it's time for another video already. In this week's episode, I will show you how to deal with the challenge of a deep set hinge, as shown above, when prepping for papering. I will also go over the reasoning behind why we cover a wooden box with paper before mounting embroidery to it. I think there's a little glue talk in this one too. 

The casket I mention in the video is one of my favorites and can be seen here. This is one of the caskets that I studied the door construction of and used to design my original configuration of the hidden compartments that are in my flat top casket lid so many years ago. One of the things I love about it, aside from the hidden pullouts that are in the slope, are the covers or doors on the top of many of the inner tray compartments. I think you will really love my interpretation of some of them on the dome top box...coming up in a later video, so check on back!

Finer Finishing Tips #4

What's Happening with that Dome Top Casket??

When I open a box my mind is filled with visions of what could be. To me, an empty box is like a huge playground, and I get to decide what rides I want in it! 

Do you have a special something...or somethings that need a place to live? By place of course I mean, a box! The something could be a bottle of perfume..but it doesn't have to be. Your something could be a piece of jewelry, it could be a rock, a special pair of scissors...some antique needlework tools...

When you are blessed with an empty box in front of you, just sit and have a cup of tea with it...ponder all the things it could be. Let it speak to you. If it tells you it wants to hold that special something you have, well then, you can make a dedicated special space just for it!

I am not good at keeping secrets for very long, so by now a lot of you know that this casket is a showcase for my beloved 17th c Gummed Silk technique I have been working on.  I thought that I had linked in my last post to the beautiful Gummed Silk Casket at the Dallas Museum of Art, but I didn't! So sorry! Click on the photo below to go check it out, it really is amazing. Flat photographs just do not do the silk justice. As one moves around it, the light catches the fibers differently and the whole just takes on a glow like no other.

You can check out my latest tips for making partitions in your 'box' below~

Happy Stitching!