Alchemy- Fashion show

Fashion show at college-Alchemy

Waiting to go on the catwalk

We were split up in groups of three for this project. Claire was our tutor, and it was a very nice experience, and very strange as well seeing how you can work with other people, not making decisions on your own. It was hard and interesting. For example, I could not make a decision as I felt, about the garment, or how the garment fitted, without discussing with my two partners.

I found a model but my two partners thought she was oversized to wear the garments. At the end I had to wear the garments myself, as Claire thought the garments would look good on my dark skin, and I was a little bit thinner than the model. In the beginning I didn't want to be the model, as I had never modelled before, and I wanted to sit back a see the garments. I felt a little bit of pressure with this. I learned that when you work as a group you have to accept things even if it is not what you want to do.
The experience of modelling. I was nervous in the beginning, as a designer you want to sit back and look at your own design and see how it looks on a model. That is the only thing that I wish I could have done. In the end I quite enjoyed my self, even though I was very nervous, and learned how to work with people and take a decision as a team. That was a positive experience.

My task was to make a collection of jewellery. I experimented with cardboard and tree bark. The cardboard was very nice to cut, but when I dyed with natural dye it got soggy and lost its shape.  This idea wasn't successful, unhappily.

Cardboard dyed with turmeric. Unfortunately it made the cardboard soggy

Cardboard with gold paint. Successful, but not suitable to make a garment with. 

I also tried to use metal for my necklace, but it didn't settle on the neck.

Gold covered bark on soft leather, on a metal necklace. This didn't hang well on the neck, so I continued experimenting

I went with the soft leather instead.

My research and my design was based on nature, and I started to recycle different kinds of tree bark and experiment with them. I liked the idea of not using wood, but using the bark that fell off the tree. Some of the tree bark was from an old trunk I found near the university. I experimented with gold paint, but it didn't work very well, so I tried gold leaf, which worked better. Claire and my team suggested I went with the gold leaf on the bark to transform something cheap to something expensive- as the alchemists tried to make gold out of base metal.

Tree bark before I cleaned and prepared it

Tree bark 

Tree bark for the anklet glued on soft leather, before putting on gold leaf

Shoes before transformation

I also decided to transform a pair of old shoes by attaching gold covered bark to them. I had problems attaching the bark to the leather, as the glues I had didn't work. I tried at least five different glues to attach the bark. I also used soft leather as a base for my jewellery and used  a leather punch to make holes in the leather. Finally I went to a paint shop and they advised me to use a metal super glue that builders use to join metal- as it was the strongest glue that they had in the store. This finally worked. I also had a problem with using gold paint as the colour didn't match the colour I wanted- bright gold. I went to an art shop  and solved this by getting gold leaf.

Beginning of transformation

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The finished shoes

I made a dye made with mud, using paint thinner to make my mud dye. It was too thick, but I added more of the paint thinner to dilute it. I used this in the cracks of the bark before I put the gold leaf on.
In the beginning I used the wood workshop studio to cut the bark into little pieces, but it looked too straight and too finished. I wanted to have an organic look, so I talked to Claire on our next tutorial. And she agreed, so I began to break the bark with my fingers (after I'd dried it, - advice from the workshop staff).

One of my bracelets

Bracelet

Bracelet

Things I would like to do better. I must admit that my drawing wasn't strong enough to back up the idea I had. I have been working taking extra lessons to improve my drawing. I learned that sharing as a group was a good experience, because you just have an idea, and when you speak about an idea with your team you clarify that.