Til Death Do Us Part - Idea-ology Coffin 2

Part Two of my coffin project features Constance after her wedding...or weddings....

Constance has gone through a few changes over the years and this is the most current version. I took these photos on a midnight ride through on the 50th anniversary of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion last August. In keeping with that tradition, I actually have two versions of this side of my coffin project. Today I have a photo of version one at the top and tomorrow I will have a photo and tutorial for version two, which is the final version.

In yesterday's post I discussed how to cover the Vignette Coffin. The inside of mine is covered with some Halloween Wallpaper on the bottom and some of the Abandoned paper on the top. I wanted a sort of mantle or hearth in mine, so I gave kind of the illusion of one by trimming an Etcetera Trims Bracket so that it was just long enough to fit across the coffin. It seems to be upheld by one of the Vignette Accents. On the mantle I added two Drippy Candles. I made a photo tutorial here. I also added a Foundry Frame with a piece of the Mirrored Sheets behind it. I aged the mirror by wiping some Vintage Distress Collage Medium on the Mirrored piece and then wiping some of it off as it dried.

I needed some mourning draping for the mirror. You could drape the ornate frame of a mirror during the Victorian age, or you could completely cover a mirror or painting as part of the displays of mourning during the 19th century. I didn't feel like Constance was really in full mourning so I merely draped the frame and gate in version one. For the draping, I colored some Mummy cloth with Distress Spray Stain in Black Soot.

One of the key parts of the attic scene are all of the photos of Constance with her husbands. I didn't have wedding photos so I opted for the portraits of men in the Curiosities Sticker Book. All of the photo stickers fit in the various Deco Frames, the only one that didn't fit well was the long rectangle. So I attached one of these photo stickers to the bottom of the portait and then attached the frame and trimmed off the excess. It's hidden and you really wouldn't see the empty bottom of the frame, but I would know it was empty and it would bother me, so this was my solution.

Here are two of Constances deceased husbands.

Here are two more, one represented as a spirit sitting in the attic, and as you can see, the bottom of the long frame isn't visible.

I added a handmade book with the words marriages and deaths that is found in the Clippings Stickers portion of the Curiosities Sticker Book. To make this book of marriages and deaths (I kind of wanted it to have to be an entire book for her!) I used the Fortune Teller poster from the Halloween Snippets pack. I'm not in to fortune telling, so I usually throw those parts of the Ephemera and Layers away, but this year l really liked the borders on some of fortune telling Ephemera/Snippets, so I decided to figure out a way to use them. I started by covered the fortune telling bits with Abandoned paper and they made some nice, heavy covers, and it was fun making books.

To make the mini book, I first found the middle of the paper, then scored it so that there was a 3/16 binding in the middle. Then I trimmed some pages from an old book until I had a nice 3/16 thick stack of "pages." Put a thick line of Distress Collage Medium along the inside of the binding and push the stack of pages into it to hold them in place and form a book.

I have the Halloween Paper Doll husband leaning on a skull. I aged the skull and bones with Translucent Distress Grit Paste and the rubbing on some Distress Crayons in various browns. 

 One last thing I did in the attic portion of this side of the coffin, was to cover the edges of the Vignette coffin with Halloween Trim Tape. I put a tiny bit of Distress Collage Medium onto the edge, then pressed the Trim Tape into it to make sure it stays in place.

In the next post I will finish up with the two versions of the lower part of the piece, which will give you some additional ideas and options if you want to make a piece like this.

Hurry back,

Tami

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