Lady Artisan: Sirena, the Mermaid

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Sirena

Mermaid, siren, Melusine, nixie--the enchantress of the sea. I started with a plstic bowling-pin shaped armature (it was a papier mache bowling pin that turned out to have a green plastic armature underneath) and drew the basic body shape freehand. Then I cut out the pattern with a dremel. She stands 9" (9.5" if you include her hair) with a face cabachon made from polymer clay (Sculpey Ultra Light) on which I drew and colored the facial features. Unfortunately, I used pastel pencils to color the face in (I really like how saturated and bright those colors look) so trying to varnish the face caused the colors to start smearing. To fix that, I put a thin piece of see-through cloth over the face and varnished over the cloth--the facial features showed through nicely and I didn't have the smearing problem.

The hair is wool that I did very little with. I basically just found some curly, curly strands in the length I wanted and wrapped a piece of beading wire around the middle. Then I shoved the wire into a hole on the top of her head and glued it in place.

The torso and arms have been painted with metallic watercolor in a gold and copper color. They're pretty steadfast, surprisingly, because all the acrylic paint I used on it has either peeled off or started peeling. The tail has aqua and peridot metallic watercolor kind of swirled together. I strung some Czech glass seed beads with some other rectangular glass beads and some freshwater pearls and then SEWED them onto the plastic (yep, I started that in a major moment of insanity). Oh, the starfish breasts and the shell down low are all glued in place.

The back of the tail has been real fun (no, really...I LOVE sticking needles into plastic and trying to figure out how to tie off knots on the inside). I have been punching the holes with a bookbinders awl and then basically stitching the large sequin with a small circle shell on one set at a time. Bit of a pain but I like the way it looks.

The necklace is an old pendant I had lying around that I attached to a piece of suede cording and glued around her neck. The biggest change I need to make on her is the trim. Because I used a Dremel (and not very skilfully, I might add) on thick plastic, the edges are very rough and needed some kind of finishing on them. I tried to use copper tape (with the adhesive on the back) but it really isn't sticking. So I'm going to wait until I have the inside lined and then probably glue some kind of ribbon or trim around the edges--just haven't figured out what yet.

To finish her, I have to complete the final few sequins on the back of the tail and then I have some sequined material (from an old dress a dollmaking friend gave to me) in turqoise, blue and purple colors that I think will work perfectly for lining the inside of the mermaid.

I'll try to get a pic of the bowling pin armature sometime soon.