More Mini Madness

Our last post was about creating items for the ladies' chatelaines. The shop continued having fun with even more tiny challenges, illustrated below. Give them a try. We'd love to hear how you make your minis.

Cameos:

The Designer resized a number of portrait cameos she found on the web. Out came all the jewelry findings again, along with buttons and ribbons for the accessorists to choose from. Bracelet toggles came with loops already attached. Woohoo! A pair of earrings was used as a cameo frame and a chatelaine holder. See if you can find it in the What's New section of Miss Chatelaine.

The portraits were cut out carefully, including their frames. Cameos to be applied to toggle loops were cut with some cardstock border so they could be glued behind the toggle.

Portraits meant for buttons sans shanks, were sized to fit the button itself. Those did need a jump ring applied to attach to the chatelaine. Sharpie pen was used to touch up cut edges.

The backs of the buttons and the toggle loops were covered either with a decorative button, or some foil cut from a paper doily.

The cardstock cameo itself was finished with clear nail polish. How many techniques do you think were learned from making the pocket watches?

Scent bottles:

It wasn't unusual for ladies to carry a scent bottle. Adelaide's is reused from a thrift store necklace. She is quite pleased with it.

Other scent bottles were made from beads and findings. This is Charlotte's.

Here is Evalina's scent bottle.

There is lots of room for creativity with these little bottles. They can actually sit on a dresser on their own.

HINT: Do not use magnetic bracelet closures for bottle stoppers. Olympic gold medal tangling WILL happen.

Keys:

All the ladies carry important keys with them. Sadly, the card stock version proved as disappointing an experiment as the scissors. There are lots of mini keys to buy on the web, but who needs 100 miniature keys all at once? One lonely key charm was discovered in the bins, but the rest were manufactured in this way:

The bracelet toggles inspired us once again. This is what we started with. Using the NON magnetic side of a closure as a hanging loop, and an earring back for the key.

The first step was to clip off one end of the toggle itself for the business end of the key. Then the smallest edge of the toggle loop was removed. Most of the others had cracked up into pieces, but this one did not. So it was left as is and the earring back put away. 

The fastener loop was then glued to the round end. You will need a jump ring to attach the key to the chatelaine chain.

A touch of metallic Sharpie was used to finish the cut ends of the toggle and key.

Here are two examples of keys where the toggle loop did not survive and the earring back was applied instead. You can see bits of the original loop, which fit right in.

Not bad, really. Very easy to do. 

Watch fobs:

At last, Armand gets an accessory HE can wear. The Designer once again assembled ribbons and findings for the shop to use. The Boss did need to buy some crimping clasps for the ends of the ribbon, but it was not an expensive purchase and none could be found in stock or thrift. Their colour is easy to change with those good old metallic Sharpies.

Armand is 20 inches tall. So the ribbons for the fob were cut so his watch could sit in the breeches watch pocket, and fold over with enough length for the fob to be seen just below his vest. 

Both ends of the ribbons were sealed to prevent fraying. A touch of white glue would do the trick too.

Both ends of the ribbons were closed with a crimping clamp. Please note that the clasps have a loop on them to attach fob and watch. The crimp worked a treat and wasn't hard to handle at all. If you don't have the shielded pliers put a piece of felt over the crimp to prevent distortion.

Then attach the watch and fob with jump rings.

Here are three completed fobs. It will be easier to make watches for all of them, rather than moving the little watch around.

Ribbon fobs are the fastest and easiest to make and could be worn by any class of person. Decorated accordingly, of course. Ladies also wore watch fobs, but ours are happy with the chatelaines at the moment.

Please let us know if you find these examples useful. We are always happy to receive comments and suggestions.

Time for tea.