Part of what I’ve been trying to do with this Dresses series since the first Sydney BAG meeting where I showed them the first book is HANG the dresses somehow. I’ve tried gluing them to frame, gluing them down, putting them in pockets, putting them in an envelope, and even hanging off brads (which kind of worked). This time I used gold ribbon between two slits to form a hook, which kind of worked. The gold ribbon was recently gifted to me from Paul’s clearing out his craft box, which is why it was even in my mind – the serendipity factor.
I cut the pages to fit Strategies of Genius by Robert Dilts – a plain black cover, but good because I own a series of the same size and shape. I discovered the heavy card(which I’d used for the carousel version of Five dresses and found it too inflexible. I chucked away all of the other pages i didn’t use – i try to remember I cannot make a silk purse from the sow’s ear. But I’d cut some parts of the carousel from this card, and there were L shaped pieces left. So I used some of those L shaped pieces to form these pages, knowing I wanted to hang things from them.
This collaged background I did from scratch. Used coloured photos from Fashion which were not the cat walk pictures I’m planning to make a work from – designer backgrounds and fabulous fabrics. I wish I’d taken a photo of the bottom layers, because they looked great. Then covering the whole thing in pattern tissue muted everything, and because I’ve been meaning to do it for ages, I added some doilies (i have acquired 3 different styles of paper doilies, probably from Meaghan’s mum?). And then some Gansai Tambi watercolour washes in Indigo and crimson, and then I highlighted some yellow bits with posca marker, watercolour pencil and gansai tambi ochre. Finally I put a layer of blue oil pastel to bring up the wrinkles in the tissue.
Added slits, and ribbons, hung the already cricut-cut dresses I had left and stuck it into the cover.
Inside cover and back cover are images from Fashion (beads and such).
It was lots of layers and lots of time waiting for glue to dry in the winter cold.
If I were to do this again:
- consider hole punches for the hanging rather than slits – do i need the curly ribbon ends? maybe make the holes with the cricut?
- what if it looked like a wardrobe? or a store window?
