I didn’t have time to blog the last step of my progress so I’ll start with that. So Mary Poppins’ umbrella parrot head handle was the biggest challenge of the project. I ended up making it with sculpey premo clay and baking it… and the last step was painting it. I used regular old acrylic paint.

It was an unseasonably nice day so I set up a table outside and we all went outside to paint (Ponette, Harley, Penny, and I). It took a long time to paint… I haven’t painted anything in years and blending/mixing acrylic paint is not that easy. I was having some issues because it dries so fast and I needed to paint faster to blend the colors… I ended up doing it many thin layers.

At this point it got dark out so I had to move my operation inside to my very dark dining room.. I’m glad I got the bulk of it done in the natural light!

After I added the catch light in the eye… after this I added a medium gloss varnish et voila it was done, yay!

The last piece of the puzzle was Ponette’s white shirt and red bowtie. Yes, Mary Poppins’ actual shirt had yellow ribbons on it but since you couldn’t really see it with her coat buttoned up, I decided to forego the ribbons and focus on the collar. I managed to find some white edging at the fabric store that I ended up cutting in half and then gathering to create the wavy collar top.

I had the photoshoot the following day (after having had 4 photoshoots, what a busy weekend!).  I got the set ready and dressed Ponette… she was ready!

Here’s the final shot!

And a few shots of the props…

I knitted the scarf about 4 times… the perfect color yarn was nearly impossible to find, I ordered about 8 skeins of yarn and finally the very last one that arrived was the perfect color (for the stripes).  Agh what a pain!

Here’s the completed umbrella. The umbrella itself is an 18″ doll umbrella that I spray painted black. I tried using fabric dye but it doesn’t seem to be actual nylon or polyester, so the dye didn’t stick at all, lol. It was crunch time so I had to do spray paint!

The carpet bag turned out pretty good, I was so lucky to find this fabric!

And here are a few extra shots of Ponette:

Sans scarf, bag, and umbrella…

Shoot is over, she’s over it!

Here’s a little behind the scenes shot that I snapped real quick with my phone. I love this girl so much… Ponette did so good, she got extra treats!

Here she is trying the base layers on for size… this is pre-collar, buttons, sleeves.

After I finished the coat, I put everything on her that we have made so far…

I still have to paint the parrot head, dye the umbrella (and attach the parrot head), make a white shirt and make the red bowtie. Oh, and I have to get props for the shoot (background, cloud surface). Almost there, planning to shoot on Sunday!

If you’re not following along, join us on Facebook and Instagram! Ponette’s account is really growing really fast on Instagram, I can’t believe it…

Mary Poppins’ parrot umbrella is/was the most overwhelming part of this project for me. I did not know where to begin. I ordered this pink doll umbrella for her since it is sized for an 18″ doll. Unfortunately no company makes black doll umbrellas (I can’t believe it, really?!) and so I will have to dye it black myself.

If you haven’t seen, Mary Poppins’ umbrella is adorned by a talking parrot head.

Ahhhh, thank you Mary Poppins for reminding us (me) that “Practically perfect people never permit sentiment to muddle their thinking.” Words to live by. Ponette on the other hand, is practically perfect in every way, no doubt about that.

As I work on this project it really reminds me how lucky I am to have such an amazing best friend. Ponette is the last piece of my youth, she has been with me through it all. We finished college together, moved across the country together, added new fur-members to our family. She has really blossomed the past few years and we are closer than ever! I never imagined her being my shining star and creative inspiration, but I’m so glad she’s the one. 5-10-15 years ago I never would have expected to end up where I am now… working on awesome photo projects about my cat and actually utilizing skills that I love and enjoy (sculpting, knitting, sewing/fashion design, photography, etc), it’s crazy and thrilling to be living the dream!

Also, living in Mary Poppins-land for the past two weeks has been quite a treat. After I finished Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I watched Mary Poppins for the first time in probably 20 years. It was just as great as I remember it to be, and I still remembered the words to all of the songs hehe. I didn’t remember it being 2 hours and 15 minutes, but that’s ok!  Mary Poppins really is a wonderful character and I’m very proud to have Ponette embody her spirit in this project.

So what to do about the parrot head? I searched online everywhere and I definitely can’t buy one that actually looks authentic and is cat-sized… the umbrella was the first hurdle, the parrot head the second. I definitely reached a new level of nerd-dom and watched way too many youtube videos about different types of molds and casting things, but still felt a sense of complete uncertainty as to how I even approach it. I figured I would sculpt it from clay and then make a mold to cast it in resin (or something) and then paint it. I haven’t casted anything since college 15 years ago and I don’t know anything about clay so I researched online as much as I could and decided to go with Sculpey Premo Clay, a polymer clay that you can bake. I also ordered a silicon mold set but I don’t know if I can make a mold from this type of clay without losing details, so for now I’m just planning on using the baked clay and painting it.

If anyone knows anything about making a mold from a clay object please give me some tips, though I don’t know if I’ll even need to do that now at this point.

Here’s the latest progress! It took me about 7 hours to sculpt it (using my hands and a $1.37 wooden clay tool). I made a foil ball armature for the inside so that it wouldn’t have to be solid clay. The beak is all clay… I bought glass eyes too but I don’t think I can use them now which is a total bummer.

I studied photos of the parrot head online and ended up using this one as the main reference:

It is the only image I could find online that is a photo of what seems like the authentic prop from the movie. All of the more recent renditions of the parrot head look a little cartoony, and I am trying to go for a more realistic look.  This is as close as I was willing to get it given the horrible overhead lighting situation in my living room at 3am.

This past weekend I baked it… it was really scary and I have no idea if I baked it long enough but I hope I did!  …Now to paint it this week!

The Mary Poppins scarf has also been in the works this weekend. I ordered 4 skeins of yarn online last week, all of which were slightly the wrong color, and I finally found the right colors at my local yarn store… only slightly different weights, ugh.. so the scarf stripes look extra fuzzy. I literally would need to dye the yarn myself  to get the right colors in the right weight. I can’t believe how hard it is to find the right yarn!

This pattern is also pretty much impossible to find a pattern for. I found a few suggested patterns online that I slightly modified for this scarf. It took a long time, much longer than I anticipated, but I think it came out looking pretty good. Knitting has been a hobby of mine since I was a little kid, though I haven’t picked up the knitting needles in many years… so I definitely had to dig deep inside the vault of my knitting mind to figure this one out.  This is as close as I could get it.

I’m hoping to shoot this week… These are the things I still have to do:

• Paint and varnish the parrot head and attach to the umbrella
• Dye umbrella black
• Finish shirt/coat pattern and sew it together
• Sew red bowtie

Until next time…. !!!

Click the button below to purchase a PDF 10-step tutorial. $10 will help support Iconocat.

Or if you’d like to buy one already made, find it on Etsy here.

8 hours later et voila! It measures about 7″ and I did NOT line it, lol. I also didn’t have a small enough buckle so I made a little faux buckle leather loop instead. It’s fabric, a piece of cardboard (to hold the shape in the bottom), brown lambskin leather (handles, straps), and pipe cleaners (frame). Can’t believe I finished it in a day!

…More progress soon, I’m super excited about this one!

She is wearing a custom Supreme Court justice gown, a hand-beaded collar “jabot” and stick-on earrings. Sorry, no glasses… she wasn’t too fond of the earrings so I didn’t want to push my luck with the glasses…. let’s just say she left them at home, heh.

Nettie’s proud to serve justice and represent strong independent women everywhere, she’s ready for her first case!

Here she is next to Ruth Bader Ginsburg… I can’t tell who’s who… can you?

Here are a couple more shots…

Here is a closeup of her jabot.  I hand-beaded it to match RBG’s, it was not easy. Also picked up an awesome magnetic clasp at my favorite neighborhood bead shop, Blue Door Beads.

Here are some interesting facts I found around the internet about Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

• She has a collection of neck collars “jabots” that she wears, each one bearing a different significance. She has a studded one that she wears when she issues dissents, and her favorite one (as shown) is a white beaded jabot from Cape Town, South Africa.
• Ruth’s mother passed away due to cervical cancer just before her high school graduation. She says this about her mother: “the bravest and strongest person I have known, who was taken from me much too soon. I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”
• Having faced gender discrimination within the industry of law (after graduating Harvard law school with honors), she wrote, “The traditional law firms were just beginning to turn around on hiring Jews. But to be a woman, a Jew, and a mother to boot—that combination was a bit too much.”
• Justice Ginsburg was President Clinton’s first appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993.
• She enjoys mystery novels, horseback riding, water skiing and golfing!
• More interesting facts about her here.

She doesn’t mind having it on either, I put it on her for a fitting and she didn’t flinch at all, just sat there. I’m planning on having her big photoshoot this week, just have to pick up a few more things.

So stay tuned, I’m so excited to get this first look done, it will be such a milestone for the next things to come. My list of potential people is also growing, so I can see this project lasting a very long time. =^..^=

I’m on Bloglovin

How to even get started? I started researching photos of RBG online… I noticed that her collars (“jabots”) were the most unique elements of her look. Her favorite piece is a white hand-beaded jabot from Cape Town, South Africa. Wow, I had my work cut out for me… I hadn’t made a beaded necklace in 20 years! Luckily, I used to make those beaded flower necklaces and other designs when I was about 12-13 and sold them at craft shows, so I’m no stranger to the bead world, it’s just been a really long time.

So I bought a pack of white glass seed beads and got to work. It took me about 9 hours to figure out and make this beauty but it came out great and I believe it is exactly the same size as the one RGB wears, though it looks much larger on Ponette, since she has no shoulders! The clasp is awesome and magnetic, so it will separate if Poe decides to violently scratch an itch or try to free herself from the jabot. Thanks to my favorite neighborhood bead store, Blue Door Beads! Pardon the photo quality… was taken with iPhone. You get the idea though, better pics to come when her outfit is finished.

I also bought black polyester and a zipper for the gown and am in the process of working on it. It’s the same fabric most graduation gowns are made from, hehe. Since I have no pattern I had to start from scratch. I basically used some scrap fabric to piece a gown together and figure out the sizes/shapes with safety pins before cutting into the real fabric. The real test will be this weekend when I sew it together, eeek!

Stay tuned for more updates. Once I finish the gown, I’m going to have her official Iconocat RGB photoshoot… can’t wait!