The Sweet Tutu

I think it's safe to say that the past 6 months has been the busiest time of my life over 1 single project. For anyone who has been following my progress on facebook, I thank you for putting up with my posts, photo splurging and for taking interest.

Model- Leigh Cookson
Photographer- Sarah French

So why the tutu? Well cleshay answer number 1, The tutu was something I wanted to cover on my course. Looking back to when I went to the Costume graduate exhibition before I left school (that was a very long time ago!), the tutu's in the exhibition blew me away just as much as the 19th century period costumes. So when the opportunity arose at the start of the academic year, I jumped straight on it. Answer number 2, For anyone who knows me, or has read my introduction, my background is dancing, having a mum with a dancing school and a big wardrobe full of costumes!!! If it wasn't for my mum dragging me to the costume store every school half term and putting me in the dressing room for every production she supplied dancers for, I don't think I would have developed the strong passion and love for costumes and theatre that I have now. I wanted to pay homage for that background but add a little bit of Lucy Bell craziness into the mixture.

So how did this crazy idea start? So back in November the costumes girls and I went to see The Nutcracker at our theatre in Bournemouth. At this point I was definitely wanted to do the tutu project, I just didn't know which character. Whilst watching the Sugar Plum Fairy suite I remembered that the last time I watched the ballet, in London,I was extremely disappointed with the Sugar plum Fairy's costume. From their I went on a slight mission to remember every single version of Nutcracker I had seen. The one that stuck out the most was Matthew Bourne's Nutcracker with a line in the programme I own “Everything is edible in Sweetieland and its inhabitants are judged not by how they look but how they taste!” 

So from this quote I had the new question of could I make you judge my work by looking but make your taste buds very aware of what you can see? So from here I changed the extremes. I decided to create my own version of the Sugar Plum Fairy, with the intention to make her the brightest, sweetest, most artificial (remember the artifical part!) character on the planet. With this decision came the second decision and advisory from my tutor that because of the amount of extreme detail and textiles that would be done, the tutu would be better as an exhibition piece where you could look close up at the sweets. Rather than see them from a distance and half the detail would lost.... not to mention that half of the decoration would possibly fly off the minute the dancer did pirouettes. 

The parts that should have made me insane (and probably did) 

The one challenge that went through many trials and errors in the entire project. How the bloody hell am I going to make these sweets look real? Thanks to our uni having an amazing workshop department, the technicians there gave me a helping hand where they introduced me into silicone and resin. 

 All the sweets in the boxes were covered in silicone where they made maulds for resin. For the more squidgy guelliton sweets the same process was made but use liquid latex instead of resin. Other sweet processes were made but i'm not telling you everything ;)

Model- Leigh Cookson
Photographer- Sarah French 

 Disolvable fabric. A textile technique I wanted to try so this was a good excuse to experiment. In my samples I could create caramel baskets and sugary treats. But what made it to the tutu was layers of various pinks, purples, blues, and green thread machined in different patterns created the look of candyfloss stretched out. On a small scale it was fun. On a bigger scale...

... I went a little mad. In total I think I spent 19 hours machining like crazy but once the water runs through you get this cool effect.

The last insane idea was to make edible rose petals. Another textile technique I found that I wanted to try. The process was easy. However...

Photo courtesy of Becki Fisher  
                                                                             

                                              .... there are over 100 petals!.....

                               ....and I was mad enough to bead every single one of them too!

Model- Leigh Cookson
Photographer- Sarah French 

Well that showcases all the mad things I have done in this project. I hope you have enjoyed this post. Sorry it has taken me so long to get round to writing it. 

List of thank yous 

Dexter- thank you for teaching me the art form I always wanted to learn. It has been an amazing journey and I would easily do it all again. Also thank you for believing that I could do this and pushing my boundaries further than my limit.  

Heather, Mikala and Sophie- We did it guys! We can all make tutu's and they all look amazing! 

Sarah French- Thank you for stepping in as photographer last minute. 

Emma Rae Hart- Thank you for doing the hair and make up. It adds to the final touch perfectly. 

Leigh Cookson- My beautiful model

Becki, Hanah, Emma, Danae, Helen and Jess- In the last 2 weeks of the project, at some point these guys all helped me: bead, sew petals, forced fed me chocolate, injected caffine into my bloodstream (okay they got me caramel lattes) and have pulled me back on my feet when I wanted to breakdown. Thank you guys for keeping me alive!!!! 

And lastly (and cheesey thank you but its needed) Mum- This project would never have existed if I had never gone to dancing, never seen a ballet and had never played dress up in dressing room 8 or the costume store. Thank you for giving me all of this.