I was curious about a perfume bottle Dowager Lady Violet had on Downton Abbey and discovered it was a vintage perfume called Phul-Nana by Grossmith's, London. The Grossmith company is back in business today and has revived production of some of their classic vintage scents including this one with all new packaging. I liked the look of their original vintage products, so when I found an old empty bottle on http://www.ebay.com I decided to make a vintage inspired label just for display on my shelf. Having created my version of the label based on some pictures of vintage bottles with label intact I then attempted to make a vintage looking box to match.
I found that an empty toilet roll core ( a paper towel core is the same width) is about the right size at 4" tall to hold the bottle and used two of them to make two segments of 1" and 3 " allowing some extra for a seam allowance at either end to glue to the oval shapes for the ends. I cut a zig-zag pattern into the seam allowance which were folded over to glue to oval pieces of card for the ends, I pasted an extra oval on the insides to make the ends stronger. Next I created the vintage inspired pattern to print and pasted it to the assembled pieces . Finally I used an extra piece of roll cut and glued together to fit inside the lower section of the box.
The completed project, not an exact replica and not perfect by any means but I'm pleased with the result!
Screen capture of Lady Violet from Downton Abbey (Masterpiece / PBS) ©Carnival Films
I was late fan of Downton Abbey and began watching a couple of seasons after it started but was immediately taken by the costumes both the upstairs and downstairs variety. I already loved the 1920's era fashions, the simple lines and early Coco Chanel creations, and the flapper look so I began to read up on anything I could find about the costume creation for the show. One of the costume designers mentioned in an interview that she found inspiration in the publications of the era such as the Girls Own Annual pictured above and having got hold of one on eBay I love to browse the pages for the illustrations and stories and craft ideas such as Christmas gifts to make and ideas for easy dresses dresses to make - such as the "one piece dress" pictured below.
