Last week I mentioned the dress form that I saw at Acme Junk Co with a price tag of $475.

It was very cool, but you know me, I’d never spend $475 on something like that.

So I thought this might be a fun time to re-visit the stories behind my ‘dress forms’.  One that I made myself out of a Styrofoam mannequin torso, a lamp table base and a door knob, and one that I purchased at a garage sale.

I shared the story of my first ‘dress form’ once before here on the blog, back in 2013.  Yowza, have I really been blogging that long?!

You’ve maybe seen it being used to stage a piece of furniture here and there over the years.

  But lots of you probably don’t know the story behind Lula.

I named her after one of my favorite great aunts.  She was my grandmother’s sister and she and her husband lived on a farm in South Dakota.  As children, my brother, sister and I would stay with them for a week or two in the summer.

That’s a photo of Lula and her first husband, whom I never met.  He passed away and she then married my Uncle Homer.

The mannequin torso that I used to create Lula was rescued from the old Oakdale Mall (for any of you locals who may remember it) by one of the city’s public works superintendents.  The mall was being torn down and the property cleared for new development (it’s now a HyVee grocery store).  He brought it over to City Hall and asked if I wanted it (this, of course, was back when I worked there).

To be honest, I wasn’t quite so sure about a yellow Styrofoam torso, but I took it.

I knew I needed to come up with some sort of a base for it, so when I came across one of those mid-century lamp tables in the free pile at a garage sale I grabbed it.

You remember those lamp tables that were popular in the 50’s and 60’s right?

Mine didn’t look quite like that, and of course it was in pretty rough shape.  But you get the idea.  The base ended up being perfect for my mannequin.

Naturally, I asked for my handyman Ken’s help in attaching the mannequin to the table base.  To this day I’m still not sure exactly how he did it, but they are firmly attached.

It was a long time ago, but I’m pretty sure I painted the table base in black latex paint.  I was totally unfamiliar with chalk paint back then.  However, I painted the Styrofoam torso in Rust-Oleum black chalkboard paint.

I knew I needed to do something to cap off the neck of my mannequin, so I ended up deciding to use an old black enamel door knob.

It’s just pinned to the Styrofoam, but it mostly stays in place.  Same for the metal no. 1 plate.

All of the photos so far in this post are showing Lula decorated with a white chalk pen, but a few years ago I gave the torso a fresh coat of black chalk paint, and then added some gold re.design with prima transfers to her instead.

The crown and the swag on her chest are from their Gilded Home & Nature set, and the wording at the base is from their Somewhere in France set.

My second dress form, Collette, start out life looking like this …

It was covered in an ugly grey jersey knit fabric that had definitely seen better days.

I purchased it at a garage sale, and unfortunately I don’t remember exactly how much I paid, but I know it was less than $100.

It was fairly simple to rip all of that fabric off to reveal the cardboard form underneath.

The metal collar at the neck was still just a bit too new and shiny looking for my taste, so after first painting it with a coat of Dixie Belle’s Caviar, I gave it a coat of Prima Marketing’s Metallique wax in Bronze Age.

Then I changed out the original finial for this painted one …

For the final pièce de résistance, I added bits and pieces from the Prima Marketing Catalogue transfer to it.

By the way, in case any of you are wondering, I did not top coat the transfers on either one of these dress forms and they are still holding up perfectly.  Of course, they are indoors and not handled frequently so that may be a factor.

I totally love how this one turned out.

So much so that I still have it.  In fact, both of these dress forms are in the corner in our bedroom.

I haul them out for the occasional photo shoot, but otherwise they just hang out there holding all of my vintage necklaces.

So let’s see, Lula was mostly free.  The torso was free, the table lamp base was free, the door knob came out of my stash, so that just leaves paint and transfers.  And actually, I was a content creator for re.design with prima at the time, so the transfers were free too.

I don’t remember precisely what I paid for Collette, but I know it was less than $100.  Probably significantly less.  The finial I added was in my stash, and again, the transfer was a freebie at the time.

So, for significantly less than $475 each, I have two pretty cool dress forms.  It just goes to show what you can come up with if you use a little imagination!