Lord of the Rings-Inspired Nursery

 

Well, there isn't a lot of sewing going on in my baby's room, but there is SOME, so I figured I would post the progress anyways.

We are days away from going to the hospital to deliver our very first child! My husband and I are both High School teachers, and reading is something we value almost above all other things.  Therefore, we both agreed our daughter should have a literary name, and a strong female name at that.

Since we fell in love through a series of Lord of the Rings-related events... we decided that her name will be Eowyn, named after the character who chops off the witch king's head in the Return of the King (so romantic, I know!). :-)

In case you're still confused, she looks like this in the movies.    ---------------->





Surprisingly, in the midst of many Star Wars themed nurseries, LotR themed baby items are actually very hard to find.

<------- These Elvish alphabet prints were the only things I found.
 
Since Eowyn is a human, not an elf, obviously the elvish ABC prints wouldn't quite work. If you disagree, you're obviously not a nerd and this post no longer pertains to you. ;-)

So, in keeping with the Rohan theme (where Eowyn lives) we decided to go with a nature-green color on the walls.  I couldn't stand any of the nursery bedding sets out there, so we basically constructed the room and textiles from scratch. Manuel painted the walls a pale green while I avoided the paint fumes.

The one thing I knew I absolutely HAD to have in the nursery was a storybook-themed signpost. I have looked forward to reading aloud to my future children ever since my junior high school days of babysitting and I can just imagine the fun Eowyn and I will have pointing out which direction these amazing lands are located in!

I showed the Pinterest inspiration image to my dad, and so he brought in a tall pole with one flat side and helped us mount it to the ceiling with an L-shaped bracket. He had found various boards of different shapes to carve and burn into arrows, zigzags, and fun hands!

I told him to leave the lettering to me as I had very specific fonts I planned on using. I was inspired by the pinterest image, but wanted to include so many more fairytale locations! Thankfully, dad gave me 18 boards to work with. I chose the more worn-down signs for the scary locations like the Forbidden Forest and Sleepy Hollow and the more cutesy signs for places like Oz and Toad Hall.

Then I set up a projector and traced away. I really wish I had a picture of my 8-month pregnant belly on the floor trying to trace out the fonts! Man, it was hard to avoid casting a shadow or laying too much on the baby belly!

After tracing, I used the finest brush I could to mark out the details and serifs of the fonts on there and fill in with more acrylic Apple Barrel paint.

In keeping with the Lord of the Rings theme, I made sure I included Rohan in the list of places, as well as Hobbiton. I also originally had Gondor on the list, but it got cut when I panicked and realized I had neglected to include Camelot! Since that's the only name I could think of that includes a fairytale castle, its importance is evident!

Then, Manuel patiently let me direct him to position and reposition each sign on the post until each was in the perfect spot! My favorite nuance is that Badger's house is on the bottom run, pointing towards the ground.  Here are the signposts in order from top to bottom:

 

What's missing now?  BOOKS of course! So, inspired by all those gutter shelves on Pinterest, Manuel then nailed baseboards to 6-foot long 1x3 inch boards to create forward-facing bookshelves.  We filled them with books we saved from our our childhoods as well as all the amazing books gifted to Eowyn at her baby shower! We have so many that I had to remove some of the more-advanced books to save for later.

Inside the books are handwritten messages to Eowyn either written on the inside cover or onto a bookplate. If two people gifted the same book, I was able to return the duplicates, but still glue both gift bookplates to the inside covers. This way, Eowyn will always know who gave her which books! You can download your own bookplates from Martha Stewart's website.

Manuel then got inspired to create a little artwork. In the past I had made a canvas by using actual pages from Pride and Prejudice. This time, I happened to have an extra copy of the Return of the King lying around so I helped Manuel by pulling out every page that mentioned Eowyn. He coated a lilac canvas and then made a posterboard collage of those pages. He then projected the horse crest of Rohan onto them. He traced and then cut out the pieces and then used matte Modpodge to secure them to the canvas.

Ta-da! Manuel is considering getting this as a tattoo as well in order to honor little Eowyn.

 

Can you see Eowyn's name on the horse head?

This is a photo of the in-process garland in my livingroom.

Back during Winter Break, I had made a garland for Eowyn's baby shower based on Martha Stewart's book shower garland. I had some cat/heart fabric lying around that I snatched up for $1 a yard a year ago. I just cut it up into roughly 2-inch wide strips and tied them together.









I photocopied all the pages containing Eowyn's name throughout all three LotR books. I then mounted a single sheet onto red printer paper. I also glued a few pages back-to-back and put the double sided pages on top, making sure to create a centimeter-wide spine to really make it look like a book (and give the glue something to stick to).

I also had saved a bunch of greeting cards my coworkers gave me at the work-shower they threw for me, and so I used bits of them in the spaces between the books.

There were some cute knitted booties on one, and some laundry clothes with actual mini-clothespins on another! Perfect!

Her closet and signposts

After the shower, I strung the garland completely around the nursery, overlapping slightly at the edges.


Eowyn has no excuse not to LOVE books, she is absolutely surrounded by them!

MORE GRATUITOUS NURSERY PHOTOS: 

Above the crib (that we bought off Craigslist), there is a beautiful textile gifted to me by a friend at the shower. There's also Eowyn's name spelled with a pack of cards I bought from Michael's years ago.

Here's some photos of what you see when you first walk in the nursery door:

At eye-level there's a print of a dog that looks suspiciously like our Basset, Layla.  The giant "E" below the art print was made by my cousin Britt for the baby shower. 

The headbands next to it were made by the guests at the baby shower. I hand-knitted a ton of little bows (see below!) that people could glue onto headbands along with add buttons, old jewelery and other embellishments.

Along with some knitting, I did do SOME sewing.  First of all, I added nearly 20 hand-sewn hearts onto the book garland using some really pretty eyelet fabric:

I also made Eowyn her very first toy, a giraffe rattle with a bell inside.  :-)

I'm bringing it to the hospital for photos, just in case!












Well, the hospital bags are packed, and all we need is our little one. Hopefully she'll come this week! I'm so excited!

1940s half-moon nails

Putting on my 1940s historically accurate dress is such an important piece of getting into character for me. However, it's quite a long process that involves much more than the dress.

It includes, nails, hair, garters, seamed stockings, a 1930s bra, glamourous makeup, and then, oh yeah, the shirt dress!

Perhaps the most time-intensive component is painting my nails into 1940s half-moon shapes.  So, I thought I'd share my process for that:

First I pull out my mailing envelope sealers from my wedding 5 years ago. Good thing I don't throw anything away because they came in handy! I cut them in half so they don't peel up around my skin so much. If they are full-size they have so much trouble trying to conform to the curve of my finger that they don't even bother trying to stick to my nail.


Then I use the blunt end of a cuticle remover stick (see below) to press down the sticker onto the nails. Then, I paint away, trying not to coat all the edges of my nails; that's impossible for a klutz like me. Man is it a pain to clean up the nails later though, so the more precise you are, the better.

I wish blogger would let me rotate images. Here's my cuticle stick and my polish.

This time I waited only 15 minutes between the first and second coat of red.  Hopefully I waited long enough... I'm just tired of these nails taking up my entire day.

So, second coat goes on and let it dry even longer.

Then, peel off the stickers. I've read that you should pull them away from the nail so it doesn't peel off any of the polish.  Sure, works for me.

Lastly you've got to clean up the mess-ups. Of course, there is always some paint-bleed under the stickers.  And then there are the messy cuticles.  If I had a tiny craft brush I would use that to get rid of the mess-ups, but I have to use my medium one instead... Kind of a pain, actually.  Works a bit, though. So, after it dries for HOURS (which is what needs to happen with me since I have a tendency to bang up my nails on every ledge in existence) then you COULD put a topcoat on, but I don't for a few reasons:

First, that would require me to not hit my nails for even MORE time out of my day.  Geesh.

Second, red nail polish already takes forever to get off of my skin and nails. I don't need another layer sealing all that crap in.  Maybe I'll do a topcoat tomorrow, but this is already too much work for a Thursday.

Anyways, then they are done and gorgeous.  I'm actually surprised that my nails didn't really chip very much this past week. I thought I would have to remove the polish on Sunday on the grounds that it would start looking like crap. However, I only just removed it last night. Hmm... and this was without a topcoat. Go figure.

My 1940s dress, completed

As you can see, I finished my 1940s dress. It's a tad bit large for me, unfortunately, but it does the job. Underneath the dress I even have an authentic 1930s bra. So pretty! Too bad no one will get to see it, or WILL they?  

 Here's some more fun acting pics from "A Picasso" at the Broken Leg Stage, featuring the splendid Jaguar Bennet as Picasso. I'm, of course, that gal on the right.

You can't really see the hem of my dress below, but I'm REALLY proud of it!  I won't get to wear my hat very long in the show, but it's still there on the table in spirit.

I also bought a garter belt and seamed stocking from WhatKatieDid.com.  Now, to work on those Victory Rolls some more!

40s Hair Attempt #2

So, my mistakes the first time around were leaving the sponge rollers on the steam too long and then worsening the situation by steaming the roller cover as well. This left my hair damp and not likely to stay curled. Also, my hair was so long it was weighing down the curl.

So, the next day, I cut my hair.



My hair used to be below my boobs, but now is quite a bit shorter. I'm still not used to it.  I actually wanted to cut off 6 inches, but when I was leaving work I was ambushed by coworkers who would not allow me to cut off my hair.  They kind of freaked me out.  So, only about 4 inches was cut.  I feel like I'm back in High School.  I might have to curl my hair all the time now so I won't have to look at the gross weird-lengthed cut.

Here's my second attempt at this 40s hairstyle thing.

My adjustments today included placing the rollers vertically rather than horizontally in hopes of achieving this look:

The front and back:

I reduced the steam time to 6 seconds and didn't steam the covers this time.  The curls were still slightly damp, but they seemed to be holding up better:

Unfortunately, I had no time to tease my hair to get those Victory Rolls, so I just did a makeshift one so I could get to Art Hop on time to promote the play.

We're getting there! Less than one week until opening night!!!

40s Hair Attempt #1

I just got my Caruso Steam rollers in the mail and need to figure out this 40s thing.  "A Picasso" opens in one week!!!  I chose these steam rollers because my hair is notoriously uncurlable, and many o my friends have had success with these rollers on clean, no-product hair.

I tried to follow the placement guidelines in the instruction manual, but I wasn't putting the covers on close enough to the scalp, so they were too floppy.   I placed the rollers on the steamer for about 7-8 seconds and then also steamed the roller cover to give added oomph.  I left them in my hair for about 30 minutes, which is double the necessary time.

Here's a pic after I started to take a few rollers out.  My hair was still a little damp from the steam, so the curls quickly faded. I'm going to try NOT steaming the covers next time and see if that helps the curl.

Crazy hair below! Again, still damp, so it faded quickly.  Also, my hair is WAAAAAy too long, so that's a problem I will soon rectify.  Look for shorter hair tomorrow!

Then I attempted to do some Victory Rolls.  Not successful.  Here is me teasing my hair to add volume.  I used lots of hairspray.

The front after trying to victory roll my hair.  Ugh:

Then I needed to get all that hair out of the way in the back so I just randomly pinned it up, hoping the back of my head would't be in in the photo call for "A Picasso" that night:

See?  RANDOM back.  Geesh.  I need a haircut.

Anyways, the promo pics turned out good for the show!  If you're in the Fresno area, be sure to go see "A Picasso" at the Broken Leg Stage!

Look for hair attempt number 2 tomorrow!  (With shorter hair)