03/10/14 - Creating my accessor(y/ies)

Photo shoot headpiece samples - Caroline Wong 03/10/14

Today I worked on creating my pieces for my photoshoot as the film headpiece requires a lot more time and space to create (more about that later). I took myself off to Hobbycraft in the search for blue wire but when I created my wire 'One' and 'Two', I thought they looked a little lacklustre. On top of that, when photographed, they barely showed up on the model. It was a minor problem. Whilst I didn't want the headpieces to be super imposing, I did however want them to at least appear on camera.

This led me to pulling out some of the haberdashery I have at home and I found two blue shades of gingham ribbon. After experimenting with tying them around the blue copper wire headpieces, they became a little more showy but without all the unwanted pizazz. They became classic and girly, which was exactly what I wanted.

PVA balloon deflating - Caroline Wong 04/10/14

PVA balloon almost deflated - Caroline Wong 04/10/14

 For my film headpiece, I went home and began experimenting with PVA glue and balloons. As I was using a hot glue gun to melt through plastic cups, it naturally led to thoughts of how to use glue and other materials. Inspirations bounced off each other as I began to think about my cousin, her young age and the things that children like. That, added with the constant thought of Thing One and Thing Two's playfulness ended up with me purchasing balloons in two different blues.

I'm very happy with the way these turned out as I suppose they're similar looking to an amniotic sac. As I've been looking at psychological attachments in friends, siblings and twins, birth has no doubt also been a focus of mine and I find it interesting how birth can be considered the start or even just a stage of an attachment between twins and between a mother and child.

As the process of making these balloon structures is rather messy and involved setting up a temporary washing line across the width of my conservatory, I was unable to carry out this work at Ravensbourne and instead did it at home, leaving the PVA to dry overnight and then proceeding to pop the balloons the following night (hence the yellow lighting in the photos). It was a lengthy process obtaining these samples but I'm definitely pleased with the results and will be incorporating these into my design for my film headpiece which I am yet to design.

The use of balloons has given me a few ideas for structural designs that will be more impressive than the prim wire headpieces I'm making for my photo shoot but I am still working towards creating this next accessory. It needs to be fun and playful, much like two of the muses for my project.