100 Days: Thread Bare

The fancy embroidery scissors here were made to slip into a little pouch on Rana's sewing box (featured in next post) but I felt they looked better complementing this little basket of thread spools instead.

The spools were cut from dowel, capped with small wood rounds, wrapped in thread in the set's color palette. The scissors were fashioned out of 2-layers of roof flashing metal, 2 smashed metal grommets, and a small bee stamping, painted with aluminium paint basecoat, and bright shiny silver leaf, washed with dilute black ink patina to bring out the detail.

Sewing Box Hardware Detail:
(upper left) the scissors before leafing and black ink wash show the detail. (upper right) I tooled a working miniature box latch for the sewing box out of copper. I had more fun than should be legal making decorative pins for the pin cushion (shown next). These were insect pins made from real ladybug wings and beads! The antennae are ink stained paint brush bristles. The final shell sewing box has a working hinge whose "nails" were nothing more than the glued on cut-off heads of tiny pins!