Project 3 Terra's Beloved Tombstone Students Thread

[Muffy]

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Terra will be teaching her "Beloved "Tombstone off the album she has. Since the stone is completed she will help the students along that any questions for her when they get stuck. Therefore there will not be a instructors thread just a students.

[Terra]

Hello everyone. Yes, this will be the place to ask questions about making the Beloved stone. I have already made step by step instructions for Beloved here: Halloween Forum - Terra's Album: Tutorial: Beloved Tombstone
So that will be the source thread. But, I have lot's of other pictures and could do any additional instructions if anyone gets stuck. So, ask away

Here is a picture of what you will be making:

[Muffy]

Terra I have a question for you. Yesterday I found 2 dresses, one has this beautiful large bow on the back of it below the knees but then the dress is long in the front & gathers up in the back where the knees are & the dress is strapless. So.......I bought another dress that can be cut in 2 at the waist & the bottom half can be attached just under where the bow is on the 1st dress. Then the top half of the dress can go over the top of dress 1 because it has a beautifully draped top & long sleeves.

If I can get my sewing friend to help me put these 2 together (we are just fixing my old singer sewing machine) once you apply the monster mud & drylock you'll never be able to tell these 2 are sewn together>>>Right?

One more question.......did you use a halloween wig or a real one?

Muffy

[Terra]

You are correct, you won't be able to tell that you sewed seams together. The mudding and Drylok will cover a lot of sins.

Here's a picture of the details I had on the dress before mudding. After mudding, only the bigger details were left showing. Also, you can see her wig here. It's called the Seduction wig. Here's a link to it: Seduction Wig - Brown - Costumes



The high neck and sleeves are important to have because the high neck part of the dress is how you connect the wig head form to your body. The neck material is the only thing holding it in place. The sleeves are important so you don't have to make skeleton arms. Here's another picture to see the wig head attached the body. This is right after mudding:



I can't wait to see the bow part on your dress. Sounds great. I believe one of the key elements of beauty of the tombstone is her cascading dress in the back. The dress was a bridal gown with the long train. I put the train up and got this wonderful effect:

[daddywoofdawg@hotmail.com]

In my neck of the woods finding a long dress is close to impossible to find any thoughts on places to look or is the such a thing as an online thrift store? if not and someone is looking for a business idea you might have an idea here.or anyone have one they want to sell?

[LV Scott T]

Terra, we are planning on making one of these this year. However, I was wondering...

We have made several life-size props using the Duct Tape Dummy technique to provide the realistic shape, contours, and poses of an actual human body. Our latest was the Mummy we used in our home haunt last year. It started as a DTD but then we corpsed it (layered paper towels saturated with paint & glue mixed 50/50) to make it more sturdy before wrapping it. The result was an accurate human shape, sturdy, but very light weight. The lighter weight (and resistance to cracking) is why I prefer corpsing to MonsterMudding.

So anyway, I believe for our attempt, we will start with a DTD (at least from the hips up) to get the proper underlaying shape, then dress it in an appropriate gown, corpse it, and finally paint it.

Do you approve?

[TheGothicPrincess]

Explain Monster Mud please since I have never used it before.

[Terra]

In my neck of the woods finding a long dress is close to impossible to find any thoughts on places to look or is the such a thing as an online thrift store? if not and someone is looking for a business idea you might have an idea here.or anyone have one they want to sell?

Yeah, I would think online thrift stores or even eBay would be a good place for a dress. My story of how Beloved started was from finding the dress in the first place. I was at a thrift store and found this beautiful wedding dress for $20! At first, I couldn't figure out why it was so cheap. Then as I really looked at it I realized that it was hand-sewn (not very well - I might add) and it was a tiny, tiny size! Like for an incredibly petite woman or a girl. So, that dress was probably hanging on the hanger for months because no one could fit into it. It was FATE!

Well, I'm standing there holding it marveling at the over-the-top decorations on it (I mean it had everything attached to it; beads, ruffles, appliqués) and I was desperately trying to come up with an idea for it. Then I remembered a tombstone I saw in my surfing that could suffice. The Alice Tombstone. So, the dress I found was actually the inspiration for the whole tombstone.

The happy accident was that because it was so small, it was the perfect scale for the tombstone. If you put a full-size woman on on the stone, I think it wouldn't look as good.

The second happy accident was because the decor was so over the top, it has already an ancient look to it (Victorian or colonial) and when I mudded and Dryloked it, the details just showed enough to look good. If the coats weren't so thick, I believe it would have looked silly frilly. But, if you use a plainer dress, she would look plain or modern. Which could work, I guess. It would be a different style of stone.

Bottom line: as you are looking for dresses, look for several important things:

• Very small size
• Heavy on the foofy detailing
• Long train that can be put up or some kind of bustling in the back
• High neck
• Long sleeves

[Scatterbrains]

The dress was a bridal gown with the long train. I put the train up and got this wonderful effect:

What do you mean by "put the train up"

[Scatterbrains]

Bottom line: as you are looking for dresses, look for several important things:

• Very small size
• Heavy on the foofy detailing
• Long train that can be put up or some kind of bustling in the back
• High neck
• Long sleeves

Other than the size...I saw that dress for $20 last night at Savers (a thrift store)

I don't know if I'm going to make 'Beloved' this year, but I should probably go back and get the dress