A Crown for Maris
I had hoped to show you my finished Glorious Devon picture this post, but I’m afraid I’m not quite there yet so – (in the well known phrase from the kids’ TV show, Blue Peter) Here’s one I made earlier!
Just before our pantomime, The Little Mermaid, went into the first dress rehearsal, the wardrobe mistress asked me if I would have time to make a finalé crown for Maris. Maris was the sister of Neptune and Aunt of Serina, the little mermaid. It is our invariable custom choose specific colours for all the finalé costumes and this year they were to be predominantly royal blue with silver touches and for Maris’ crown I was asked to think of the effect that water makes when something is dropped into it from a height.
I had a look at Google Images for inspiration and collected together my materials ready to make a start. These consisted of a stainless steel headband, an empty plastic milk bottle, an empty Johnson’s Baby Shampoo bottle (the colourless ones they used before they changed the colour of the shampoo and thence the bottles) some royal blue organza, pale blue organza with silver/pearl embellishments, some silver lacy type fabric and some white/iridescent beads on wires that I had salvaged from old Christmas decorations (on the assumption that I’d find a use for them some day). You can see these in the pictures below (with substitute shampoo bottle as I’d cut up the original one before I remembered to take the photo). In the end I did not use the white braid that you can also see.
My idea was to make a double splash – a tall centre splash and a shorter outer splash. (I am pretty sure that I was not going to fall foul of any copyright since I don’t think there’s any such thing as a double splash.)
I cut the outer splash from the plastic milk bottle, stapling the pieces together; and the taller one from the empty shampoo bottle. As the shampoo bottle was not cylindrical, but flattened, I heated the cut out piece with my hair dryer and squeezed it until it became more cylindrical. Then I glued some of the royal blue organza onto it. I found this took quite some time to dry and fix itself so, as time was short, I painted both sides of the shorter piece with royal blue acrylic paint.
To represent sprayed water drops, I added some of the salvaged Christmas decorations to the outer splash, having first extended them by twisting two wires together. I used some silver glitter glue on fine wires to make similar “water drops” for the inner splash and added those. I also glued some of the embellished organza onto the outside of the tall splash. Then I fixed it inside the outer splash and stapled them together at the base. After cutting two slits in the lower edges of the crown through which the headband would fit, I covered the base inside and out with some of the silver lace type fabric to cover the staples and soften the edges a bit. I cut out some of the “wave” shapes from this fabric and glued them onto the outer splash.
Finally, I slid the crown onto the headband and it was finished.
Unfortunately, when I photographed the finished crown against a dark blue background, the silver came out gold in the picture – no doubt a trick of the light. The second picture was taken against a white background and some of the silver drops appeared black.
The wardrobe mistress was pleased with the crown, as was I, but I think it would have been better to have been much larger. It was a bit too dainty to be seen from the back of the auditorium.
