Inspired by Twig and Toadstool's Queen Winter Kaia and I decided to craft a little miss for ourselves. I will say that I am less than thrilled with the outcome. I plan on reworking her, but Kaia is in love with her and that is what matters the most, anyway.
This is how we made her. In addition to these things, I also used some gold ribbon and a strand of gold elastic. Kaia picked out the wings, and so we made an angel. White feathers, (we are really not feather buyers, but we were given some in with a load of craft stuff,) pipe cleaners, fake snow, an acorn, and glitter.
Let me say in preamble to this photo that I would KILL for Photoshop right now! Okay, that isn't true, but know that the desire is very strong. I hate MS Paint more every time I have to touch the filthy thing, it makes even the easiest of tasks horrifically painful and an extraordinary amount of work. Paint is what I have, though, unfortunately, so bare with these next couple pictures, I tried, I swear.
I started with one of the white pipe cleaners. I bent it into a circle to create a base and twirled it up to help give the body some thickness. I bent the top into a small horizontal circle to give me a place to glue the head on.
This pictures makes this step look way crazier than it is. I changed the colour of the line as I went to help differential them for each other in the middle, if it is hard to tell what is what, click on the picture and zoom in on it, the larger version should help. Basically, I bent one end of the pipe cleaner around the center of the figure, brought it out to form an arm, doubled it back on itself, twirled around the center again and into the second arm, also doubled back on itself, and then twisted the end around the center of the figure again to secure it. I left the ends poking out and downward to help form the dress.
I wrapped a small handful of the snow tightly around the figure's waist and then more loosely down to the base. I wrapped more snow until the skirt was full. Another small handful I wrapped across the chest and down the arms for sleeves, billowing them at the cuffs.
I hot glued her acorn head into place, sans cap. Then I cut one of the shiny pipe cleaners up into short and long pieces to be her bangs and hair. This may be the first place I really went wrong, I am not terribly happy with her hair. Possibly the bangs are just too short, possibly she shouldn't have bangs at all, possibly this just wasn't a good hair material.
I glued her bangs on first with little dabs of hot glue on the top of her head. I made her longer hair into ringlets by wrapping them around the thin end of a chopstick before gluing them in place, in the same manner as the bangs.
Now her hat. Loved it off of her, am not so fond of it on her. I think it is the way it fits over her hair. I may pull all her hair off, glue her hat directly onto her head, and then attach the ringlets underneath it. I first covered the acorn cap in white glue and gave it a healthy coating of glitter. Then I glued a thin layer of "snow" over the top of the cap, leaving a shiny band around the edge. I followed that with a few spring off one of the feathers. To make the halo I cut a small length of the gold elastic, dabbed a smidgen of hot glue on the end and connected it into a circle. That was glued onto the hat with just a little dot at the back.
I crossed her chest with the elastic and knotted it in back, where it will be hidden, to help keep the fluff in check.
I wrapped the gold ribbon around her waist and tied it into a bow. I then also cut four small lengths of ribbon and glued them spaced out under the belt to trail down her dress.
I glued the feathers on her back for a cloak.
Then glued her wings on top of that.
Not being satisfied with the hat, I added a white pipe cleaner brim.
And there you.... oh, wow. Just... wow. All the parts looked so pretty on their own. Ah well, Kaia and I had fun crafting her together, which is what I value most in our projects. Kaia, at least, is very happy with our winter angel. Maybe I will make peace with letting her be what she is, or maybe I will have another go at her, we'll see. She is presiding over our winter table, although the winter table is still being added to. :)
Best wishes!