Finnish Iron Age silver basket headdress – Initial research

Selfie wearing my version of the silver Finnish Iron Age basket headdress/tiara

When I was at the museum in Helsinki, I saw in person this amazing “basket” headdress made with trichinopoly (aka Viking Knit) in silver wire. It was stunning, and super unusual. I’ve seen a scant few Finnish Iron Age reenactors online have made their interpretation, and I decided that this HAD to be on my project wish-list.

Unfortunately, research available on this piece is even more scant than the reproductions. The museum offered very little information about the piece, so the bulk of what I know has been gathered from reenactors who live in Finland.

Pearl Trimmed Draped Reta

pearl embellished Italian renaissance headwear

This is a follow up post from my Draped Reta (Italian Renaissance headwear) post from a few days ago. In that post I showed the first draped reta, made using the digital embroidery machine. I mentioned there that I had actually made two – this is the second, much more elaborate, and embellished with small faux pearls.

To see more about the inspiration, and basic design and construction process, please go back to the Draped Reta post first.

Draped Reta (Italian Renaissance Head Wear)

Finished embroidered draped reta

I’ve made a few different Retas over the years – all in the same sort of “Juliette cap” style, but for this one I decided to approach a different kind of Reta – one that is draped and hangs down along the sides of the head, rather than being fitted to the back of the head at all points.

Glitter Cathedral Triple Zipper Bag

Glitter Cathedral triple zipper crossbody bag

After finishing my Rain print triple zipper crossbody bag, I wanted to make a second triple zipper bag – just a little larger.

For my rain print bag, I actually enlarged the pattern from Miko Craft, printing it at 105%, however for this version I printed it off at 135% instead, which meant taping pattern pieces together.

I also had some great purple glitter HTV left over from my purple glitter dome bag, so I turned to the Maker Space and used their Cameo Silhouette 3 to cut out the same design from my Cathedral Arch mini mirrored shelf to apply to the front of this bag.

Gothic Cathedral style shelf cabinet

Side of the gothic cathedral catacomb-inspired cabinet

A few months ago I was laying in my room and looking around at all the pretty things I’d made using the laser cutter, CNC router, Cameo Silhouette and embroidery machine at the maker space – and a new idea came to me.

I wanted to make a cabinet to hide some of my rather mundane (and decidedly not spooky) hair and skin care items that I keep on top of my dresser.

I started out with a sketch book and then took that idea to Adobe Illustrator. Not only did I want a design for the cabinet to suit my spooky-creepy-cute aesthetic, but I also wanted the cabinet to have lights in it – light that would stream out of holes in the doors/etc to glow when my overhead lights were off.