On Being a Rose Bush

Yesterday I became one of the Queen of Heart's rose bushes, a costume that has been coming together for the past few month.  
 

It all started simply enough with the roses about mid-September. After some thoughts about getting a bouquet of fake roses at the store, I ended up deciding that I'd really rather make them out of felt, which then turned into hand-sewing them out of felt--all 15 of them--because if I hot glued them I realized the pin probably wouldn't go through. May I say while it's not too bad to do a few, 15 is a bit much? Then I got over excited about the leaves (didn't count those), but those I could at least do on the machine with the exception of attaching them to the roses. 

While I was going through this process, I still needed to find a sweater, so I made a trip to the swap meet to find one (post on the other finds coming soon!) and managed to find the one I'm wearing in the pic and a thermal green shirt as an additional option both for just a $1. 

So having found the perfect sweater and with the roses being done, I thought "It's the beginning of October and I'm already done, great!"...but being the obsessive Alice's Adventures in Wonderland girl that I am, I kept thinking of new things to add!

Suddenly, it occurred to me that I needed a paint can, which was easy enough to obtain and make a label for (using Lewis Carroll font, I might add!) and once again I thought I was done with the exception of maybe digging around the garage for a paint brush. Then last Friday, after having debated about it off and on for a month, I decided I really did need brown jeans if it was going to look right, so I stopped by a thrift store on my way home. Two pairs of brown pants in my size...one pair fit!!! Having checked that off my list, I was really truly done. You'll will by now caught on to where this is going.

 

It is now October 30th...I wanted a leaf mask! So I happily sat on the living room floor and made my mask while listening to the 1938 radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds". All done, again! Except around 7:30, I started thinking about how I should have a Queen of Hearts playing card dangling from my outfit somewhere and how nice it would have been if I had had time to make a stuffed hedgehog. So I hunt up an image of a Victorian playing card, while still thinking about hedgehogs and then it occurs to me I can make a felt one and pin it on my leg! Some sketching, hand-stitching, and machine stitching later, tada, hedgehog! All done! Except as I'm going to bed, I'm thinking, I really don't like the store bought paint brush...

October 31st, I wake up thinking about paint brushes. I can't hang any of my art paint brushes from my belt loop because there's no place to tie anything on to them. However, I  have two chop-sticks that I didn't end up using for the mask. I hot glue them together, leaving a gap to slip the ribbon through, glue on some yarn, wrap silver wire ribbon around the top of that, and add a little paint to make a fake brush that any playing card would be proud to paint with!  And that really truly concluded the costume making!

The non-Cheshire Cat wanted to know why it wasn't being fed from the "giant tin of cat food"

♥️ ♥️ ♥️