A Dress Form: From New To Old

I found this mannequin/dress form/bust at a thrift store for $20. I’ve always wanted an old antique dress form, but didn’t want to fork out the bucks for an antique one. I decided to try to make my new one look old.

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I started by taking off the cloth piece that was over the body. I was going to just throw it away, but my mom and some of you on Instagram suggested that I tea or coffee stain it. I soaked it in coffee overnight and it did nothing. It all rinsed out! It was a weird type of fabric that looked like it was going to be hard to stain. I tried to stain it with furniture glaze and oil based stain and it just wasn’t turning out great so I ended up throwing it away in the end. I guess I should have tried clothing dye before the other things but when I want to use what I have on hand, I grab whatever looks good at the time, haha.

When I took the clothing piece off, it actually looked really good and old underneath. I’m not sure what the junk is on the side is but I’m guessing it’s some type of glue. I decided to try to sand it off. Just FYI in case you ever try this on one of these dress forms, you might be dealing with fiberglass. I used a piece of 100 grit sandpaper with my hand to sand it off and started to feel little splinters in my hand. Ugh, I immediately went and rinsed my hands off really good and put gloves on and continued to wear my mask and safety goggles.

I sanded down the wood on the bottom area with my hand sander and 100 grit sandpaper. I thought it was going to take forever but it went very quickly!

While I liked the form the way that it was without the fabric, I wanted to darken it a little to bring out the character and try to blend the sides more with the rest of the body.

I wiped glaze all over the form with a lint free cloth. It did exactly what I was desiring! It brought out all of the character and made it look even more Antiqued!

I taped off the bottom wooden part with trash bags to keep the paint away from it and then spray painted the pole with matte black spray paint so that the rub n buff would stick better.

Once the spray paint was dry, I added the Grecian Gold rub n buff with a paintbrush.

I added whitewash to the wood base, let it dry, and then added a glaze on top of it to give it a lighter stained wood color. When I use the whitewash, I try to make sure that it as is as smooth as possible when I apply it so that it dries without streaks. Whatever the whitewash dries to look like, the glaze will bring even more of that out after applied.

If the white wash dries with streaks or splotches, they will show even more after the glaze because of the darker color being applied. This technique is one of my faves and always turns out such a pretty soft “stain” color!

Here is one more look at the before…

And, the after…I’m so pleased with how it turned out! It looks aged and antique!

I can’t wait to use it in our new/old house!

I love how there are dark spots here and there from all of the little cracks and character throughout!

I think the glaze helped to blend the side parts with the rest of the body, even better than just sanding!

The crack on the shoulder is one of my favorite parts!

Do you like these old forms too? I know it’s usually either a love or hate for people, when discussing dress forms.

Hmmm, do you think the sellers of the house we bought would mind if we start bringing loads of things over before we close?!