Growing up, I moved around quite a bit. In fact, the past year and a half I’ve spent here in Boston has been the longest I’ve lived in any one single home since I was 16. And to be honest, I wouldn’t have had it any other way, because of the wonderful experiences I’ve had and incredible places I’ve visited. Now, one of the benefits of moving so much is that I have had ample opportunity to perfect my answer in the obligatory “get to know you game” (you know the one you have to play with all the other newcomers on the first day of class, church, work, you name it). However, despite my many chances at creating the perfect answer (the one that will make everyone want to be my friend and all the guys vying for an opportunity to take me out on a date), the best I can ever come up with is “my name is Madeline and I like to be creative and make pretty things.”

Um, possible the worst answer ever. Not only is it…. Well, lackluster… it’s also, as I’ve come to realize, very vague. But how else could you describe the thing that is most important to me? How else could you describe my tendency to buy stuff from thrift shops or scavenge them from the curb the night before trash day, take them home, and reinvent what was once ugly into something beautiful?

I love to make things beautiful. This is nothing I haven’t mentioned many times before. However today I realized that while I’ve talked about my love of thrifting and reinventing many times, apart from my photography, I’ve never actually shared any of my other “reinventive” projects with you. So today I wanted to give you a little peek into my home, to see what I get up to on Sunday afternoons (my designated “craft” day, and consequently favorite day of the week).

 

 

Last week I experimented with making a mannequin that was custom-sized to my own measurements. I had seen various tutorials here and there on the internet and, given the very unrealistic proportions of the mannequin I already owned, decided I wanted to give it a try. Because really, how could you mess up wrapping duct tape around yourself to make the perfect body cast? It sounded fun to me! I’m still very new to the world of dressmaking, so who knows if this is really something that will work, but I thought I’d give it a shot!

 

 

I’ve ALSO been working on creating my first dress, without a store bought pattern! It’s my first attempt, and so far it has been slow going, but it’s been really, really fun. Perhaps in another life (or my future life) I was meant to be a dressmaker…

 

 

I’ve also been working on, and am nearly finished with, an elegant blue-velvet-tufted chair that I just want to curl up and read in all day long! It’s been several months in the making, but now that I’m nearing the end, it’s been so worth every single sore finger, staple-gun bruise, and wire-cut (like paper cuts, but much, much worse)!

 

 

When I first found this chair in the furniture section of Savers, my favorite thrift shop, it was covered in a repulsive, tattered orange velvet. Not entirely convinced it was something I wanted to mess with (the chair was entirely tufted!), I ended up leaving the store and decided that if it was still there when I next went, I would consider buying it then. Of course, a few weeks later, when I returned and the heinous orange chair was still there, I just couldn’t resist. I had spent the past few weeks since I had first seen it, envisioning it recovered in a decadent blue velvet. When I saw the chair the second time around, I knew that $10 price tag was not going to stop me. Ten minutes later I found myself driving home with my folded-down-backseat filled entirely with an arm chair that had seen far, far better days.

 

 

It took a LOT longer to turn my dreams into reality this time around, and not just because I only had a few days a month to work on my little (but kind of big) project. It turns out that tufting is really hard! But I think it was all worth it in the end. I, of course, frustratingly ran out of tacks just a few short of what I needed to complete the arm, but once the mailman delivers those, I’ll be tacking up the last little bit and calling this project a success!

 

In addition to the armchair, when I started my 365 project back in October, I decided to give myself a little extra motivation for the days I didn’t want to go out and shoot. Don’t get me wrong, as much as I love photography, if you do anything every single day for a year, it can, at times get frustrating. So I set up a rewards system for myself in the form of milestone prizes. On days 100, 200, 300, and 365, I would buy myself things I had been wanting, but had never been able to justify with a simple “because I just want it!” I figured making my way steadily through a 365 project finally gave me that reason to buy the things I had been wanting.

 

 

So what kept me going all the way up to day 100? Call me a huge dork, but I wanted a laminator.

 

 

And she arrived yesterday! To be 100% honest, I just want to laminate everything in my house. Luckily only things smaller than an 8×11 piece of paper will fit in the machine, so I’ve settled for laminating some fun bookmarks and place-markers for my planner.

 

And on the photography side of things, I’m currently working on a piece with a working title of “Tied Down”. However, working titles for me are almost never the final title of an image. This is largely because, usually, when an idea comes to me, I just title it according to what is literally happening in the image. Some working titles have included “Snow Graves”, “Green Skirt Forest”, and “Kari Evergreen”, so needless to say, often a title change is later required once I’ve finished the image and need to complete the story the piece is conveying.

But this is what the image looks like so far. There will of course be a lot of things changed between now and when I put the final version on facebook and instagram, but I thought you might enjoy seeing a work in progress of my photo editing!

 

 

Lastly, I’ve been working on something the last few weeks that I am very excited about! A coffee table book for my Daughters of the King series! I’ve been sifting through every single image I’ve taken for this project, from the costume creation, locations, and prop designs and compiling them all in this book. While I have shared most of this in various blog posts throughout the three year journey to completing this series, I’m excited to finally have it in one place. A tangible place that I can hold with my hands and reminisce over. A place to appreciate all the details, thoughts, and ideas that went into this series as if it were one perfectly sized present. I’ll be sharing more about this book next week, but in the meantime, here’s a few sneaky looks:

 

 

February has been an exciting month so far, which is sort of crazy to me, since we’re only one week in. I think this bodes well for the rest of the month. There’s a palpable sense of excitement that I can feel coming in the next few weeks, and while I’m not entirely sure what it is, I’m just going to enjoy the ride it takes me on.

 

See you next week!