The Enchanted Wastelands! (#5, #6, #7)

Like I said in my first post on this blog; I use to eat dirt. Yes, dirt, gravel and all. I’m not sure if maybe I was lacking in some kind of mineral that the dirt carried, but apparently I thought it was yummy. This was further discovered when I was about 3 and I attempted to fly by jumping off a crib, but unfortunately “flew” my tummy right into the corner of a bench knocking me breathless! What a scare this must have been for my mom, who had just lost her 3 month old daughter, Kandyse to SIDS only months earlier, to walk in and see her next youngest laying on the floor, blue in the face, not breathing. WHAT WAS I THINKING!? And where were my darn fairy wings back THEN when they were needed? Needless to say, I was ok. I was in quite a bit of pain though so my mom took me to the doctor where they learned through an X-ray that I had gravel in my intestines! (See how I tide all of that together?)

Dirt….it’s an interesting thing. It is so darn important because it is the very foundation of our life (no nerdy science pun intended)! From dirt- we get plants. We eat plants, we breathe plants. Animals eat and breathe plants. We eat animals (or some of us do). We live, because something that is predominantly dead helps to store & release nutrients when it is necessary. Pretty spectacular! Well….As you know, I live in a place where the dirt is pretty darn dead. THE MOJAVE DESERT! Dun-dun-dun-dunnnnnn (Beethoven’s 5^th)! The dirt is just about as dead as it gets out here yet stuff still grows! Kind of blows my mind. About 2 months ago, these random plants started growing through the rocks in our backyard. They weren’t weeds so I left just one to see. It was a large sunflower! Last year we planted giant sunflowers in this little spot next to the house. When the flower gets too heavy, it starts drooping down face first and then when the seeds are ready, they just start falling. We tried to collect a bunch, but we couldn't get them all. These decided to start growing on their own through the rocks. How cool is that!!? Life growing effortlessly.

Ok moving along….I’m pretty sure this is all gonna fit together!

Living in this neutral colored landscape can create a challenge for a photographer such as myself, but I have wanted to use all of my favorite spots and make something cool come out of it. The dry lake bed was for sure on my mind. When you think of “nature”, your mind doesn’t quite jump to a cracked, dry, lifeless desert does it? But I still wanted to do some sort of artsy, unique concept there. I was sitting with Andrew (my hubby wubby) at lunch and we were talking about the photo shoots. He is so incredibly talented and creative too. Without me mentioning the desert, he says…. “You know how we have this dry desert out here? Well what if you did a shoot where there was something growing out of the ground? Maybe you could have someone nourishing a flower??”  MY MIND WENT WILD!! Like W-I-L-D-wild! Tears actually filled up in my eyes! Andrew you are a genius!!! I knew exactly what to do. I already had this dress made of flowers and wings in my mind for one of my magical fairies, but had originally pictured it out in the lush, green woods. Instead, the dress found its home in a bland, lifeless, pale desert (what most people would think of it anyway). The idea has only blossomed from there (again, no pun intended).

Enjoy the next 3 pieces to the Kandylane Enchanted Gallery and the whimsical scene we created out in this beautiful dry lake bed for our majestic fairy and read all about our day below!

Introducing…..

The Enchanted Wastelands

#5

#6

#7

As you read above, this whimsical & enchanted creation had a lot of thought behind it. I just love having my feet in the dirt. I love nature. I’m a bit of a hippie you might say. The skirt was the beginning of it. I ordered the white petticoat from an online store called www.DHgate.com. I really tried hard to find one at a thrift store, but none of them had the shape I wanted. Thankfully this place did and it was rather inexpensive! I had started collecting flowers for this project over a month prior. I bought them from The Good Will, Deseret Industries, friends and online garage sales. I probably only spent a total of…ummmm $15. I just kept searching and searching! I knew that the dress alone would take a couple hundred flowers and leaves. The more I strained to “search”, the more that little voice in my head said that it would happen effortlessly if I just let it. Well, a few weeks ago, a friend of mine showed me her massive collection of silk flowers and told me that I could borrow as many as I wanted!! I just about had a heart attack! Heaven opened up its doors and gave me everything I needed to create this scene! Thankfully I had bought enough flowers that could be used for the dress that I would NOT be taking apart after.

Initially, I spent 3 hours on the skirt by myself. I started by first pulling the flower tops off of the stems and organizing them by color. As you can see below…my room looked like a garden! I layered leaves under the netting directly onto the fabric using a HOT glue gun. Then came the flowers. This was really difficult because to get each flower to stick, I was having to firmly push it down without touching the back. I continued to burn myself over and over again (another picture you can see below). My amazing niece Taylor told me that she would help me with whatever I needed so I invited her over for a flower gluing party of 2!! Her glue gun was a lower temp so she was able to stick a lot faster! Thank goodness! The 2 of us spent another 3 hours on it, cutting my time at least in half. She was busting out 3 or 4 flowers for every 1 that I did! So happy she came! Andrew spent another 30 minutes or so filling in spaces that we missed  J. I love that man!!

I absolutely loved the look of the corset we used for the first Enchanted Indigo pieces, so I really wanted to use one again. I found this perfect pale pink leather corset from www.thefashioncorsetshop.com! Love their stuff and everything is so affordable.

Ouch...

The minute I started thinking of who to use as my model, I immediately thought of my beautiful friend Genae Anderson. She is tall, graceful, gorgeous, amazing hair and has this rich mocha skin that I wanted for the pale desert contrast. Genae and I met back in 2012. We were in this fun musical together that our church put on called Seussical (from Broadway)! We have loved being in each other’s presence ever since.

Brittany (one of my best friends and makeup artist for this gallery) and I sent picture after picture of makeup ideas. I really wanted something messy, full of nature, but still natural. With the help of Pinterest, Google Images and our insane minds, we came up with something pretty spectacular! Again….we are always on the same page. It’s kind of crazy!! When the day finally came to put it all together on Genae, we fell madly in love with it!

We started hair and makeup around 2:30pm and finished around 4:30. We packed up our car and our borrowed brother and sister in law’s Excursion so we could get through the desert without getting stuck. I also borrowed this amazing old well from my neighbor down the street! I thought it would be a fun addition to our scene and they were so willing to share!! We were on the road by 4:45 and arrived at the dry lake around 5:45. Andrew, Brittany, Taylor and I began taking screw drivers to the ground creating holes for all of the flowers. I couldn't even tell you how many holes we made, but there were for sure hundreds of flowers and plants. Enough flowers and plants that a solo REAL butterfly flew around to different “flowers” for a minute! We were literally right smack in the middle of a barren desert and it shows up! I booked it to the car to get my camera and fortunately snagged a few shots of it.  So amazing!

I knew that set up was going to take forever and that actual shooting time would be about a half hour-45 min. I was right. We started shooting while my lighting was where I wanted it at about 7:30 and finished around 8:15. We had an incredible sunset!! When Andrew and I first scoped out this location, there was a windstorm! The few flowers I put in the ground for practice were practically laying flat from the wind and there was dust EVERYWHERE! I was so nervous about this happening to us on the day of the shoot but I thought the wind looked really cool. Almost smoky or foggy. I thought, what if I had Andrew drive really fast behind the flowers to kick up the dirt! Worked like a charm! Made a really cool affect. you can see Andrew driving by in one of the behind the scenes pictures below.   

Planting the first Flower!

Andrew pretending to relieve his bladder in the well

While packing up…the CUTEST little desert lizard came crawling through the “flowers”! Yet another little random creature. I haven’t researched what it is, but if anyone knows, PLEASE tell me. He was just adorable!!

We left, hungry, hot and tired. We went over to In n’ Out where Genae proudly strut herself right in there! I loved it! Lots of stares, questions and compliments! It really was a spectacular day! The 30 hours spent on this was SOO worth it!

The End!

UPDATE!!!!! November 26th 2013

First paper publication for This entire Kandylane Enchanted project! Peoples Choice winner in a contest published in Rangefinder magazine!! 

{Click here for full magazine digital link}