"Enchanted Always" (#26)

10 years ago, my mom came across an illustration in a little shop in Thousand Oaks, California. She loves and appreciates art, but doesn’t normally seek it out and purchase. “For some reason” this piece stood out to her. She decided to go ahead and get it. When I would go to her house, I would stare at it! I fell in love with it too. I loved the mystery it held. Totally out of my nature, I asked if she would put it in her will for me, lol. It really spoke to me. This was right around the time that I got my first SLR film camera and started really trying to better my photography skills. I would imagine creating real life photographs like this illustration!

Fast forward 7 years....Andrew and I buy our home in Las Vegas, my mom comes out to visit and see our new place and she brings me THAT picture as my house warming gift! My eyes filled with tears and for the past 3 years, I have stared at it as I walked by sighing at its beauty and smiling. Finally last year I took that step and started created my own enchanted scenes. I shared my very first image with this artist, Nene Thomas and she told me it looked fantastic! My heart leaped out of my chest and my eyes swelled with tears having her compliment it!

For so long, I have wondered how I could re-create this illustration in real life. The wings were so detailed and beautiful. Every bit of it had intricate details that I would want to carefully portray. Now here we are, almost one year into this Kandylane Enchanted project, and we have made it happen. I couldn’t be happier!!

Below are all the details about the illustration, behind the scenes work, the model, the makeup and even some really cool history behind the props! Please take some time to read so you don’t miss tiny pieces of significance!

Introducing….

Enchanted Always

#26

Nene Thomas Illustrations Inc. "Always"

Full side by side....

Crop side by side....

 I spoke to Nene’s office manager about the illustration because I wanted to know the backstory. This is what she said……….. “ ‘Always’ is a fairy version of ‘Memento’ which is a character from the Zarryiostrom, the youngest Illymari princess, Chesare Ilvanna.” 

Here is Memento: http://nenethomas.com/8x10-open-editions/8-x-10-memento/

And here the newest painting of Chesare with her two elder sisters, Lyrahe - in blue - and the future Queen, Tais: http://nenethomas.com/art-prints/sisters-of-illymar/

I wish I knew more about all of this, but I’m excited to learn. 

The Wings........

I don't know what I would do without my amazing hubby. When I decided that this was going to be my next project, I told him that I really had no idea how I was going to make the wings. We started collaborating and he came up with this idea to make the frame. I bought a ivory colored canvas as the material and after he was done framing, gluing and cutting, I took over and painted the best I could. I DID however do some shading in Photoshop with the final picture :-). I think they turned out pretty rad!

The Dress......

I must admit, I look crafty in my pictures, but I really am not that good at creating these costumes! They are much more of a facade of a costume in an image lol. Lots of pinning, clamping, gluing and little sewing at this stage in the game. I did what I could with the main part of the dress using this pretty red velvet fabric from Joann's. Again....Photoshop secret: the color I needed was not quite right so I darkened it up a bit after the fact :-). The arm coverings weren't as difficult as I thought they would be. I DID sew those after cutting. I was pretty proud of myself!

Those jewels were NOT easy to find. You can usually find them in multi-packs with different colors and shapes, but hardly ANYWHERE with just a single color and shape...especially that big. Most rhinestones are a lot smaller! So happy I found those! I glued the big ones onto some gold leather ribbon. The smaller ones were just little scrapbook sticky drops!

The black raven was found on a Halloween site haha.

 The Silver Chest.....

I'm gonna be honest with you, 7 years of staring at this illustration in my moms house, 3 years of it in my house, and I NEVER noticed that this fairy character was sitting on an old silver chest. It wasn't until we had our missionaries from church come over for dinner and I was explaining the whole enchanted project to them that one of the elders pointed it out! I was shocked that I hadn't seen it. So this was another piece of the puzzle I needed to figure out.

I had this blue treasure chest in my workshop for a while and I thought...what if I tipped it over and did some wood embellishments on it from Michaels, then painted it silver!! Well folks...that did the trick! I didn't need a ton of it done, and obviously I'm all about taking shortcuts, so I just did this corner and side. It ended up being perfect in the picture! My model Leyla just sat on a stool making the chest look much bigger :-).

This Sword!!........

I had multiple swords in my house, most of them given to us by my brother in law so I figured I was covered in that department, but then another choice arose! My mom's mother in law Peg who is over 80 years old had this...passed down by her great grandfather M. T. Shepler. He was a 33 degree Mason back in the 1800's, which is the highest degree offered. I have been speaking with someone who has researched and studied this subject for a long time. He says that this sword is "positively a treasure and in great shape!". The symbols identify it as a Knight Templar Sword and Brother Shepler's name engraved on the sword identifies him as the owner! What an honor to have been able to use this treasure in my photo. It really adds to its full significance!

The Makeup & The Model.....

These next pictures hold 2 of my dearest friends!

You all have been introduced to my makeup artist & hair stylist Brittany Benko! Please check her out on facebook and follow her work! She is incredible at what she does. Not only with costume makeup, but bridal, prom, photo shoots and just everyday beauty!

We used beautiful long real hair extensions given to me by my rad sister in law, Amy. Lots of curling, teasing, spraying, and pinning with the final touch of the flowers!

Her makeup was done so beautifully and with a lot of animation. Unfortunately I was packing up my car for a lot of it so I didn't capture every detail, but her face, chest and arms were covered in pale white cream and then Brittany did some very defined contouring on her to give her a very statuesque porcelain look and of course I did some perfecting in Photoshop!

Brittany did an incredible job with the black arm bands!! She hand painted them on while looking at the illustration up close! We used tacky glue to get the gold and red bands to stick on.

Here is her makeup product list:
NYC goth white cream makeup
urban decay eyeshadow primer 
urban decay Naked eyeshadow palette: buck and naked 
NYX butt naked turn the other cheek palette 
inglot gel liner for eyes and tattoo on arms
Brows filled in with medium Brown shadow from the NYX butt naked palette


Leyla Williams was my gorgeous model! Leyla and I became friends 2 years ago while in a musical for our church. We were 2 out of 3 adults cast in it so we for sure found friendship in each other! We have become so close since then and for a good while, we were walking 3-4 miles together at night! Fun times! From the moment I started this project last June 2013, I knew that THIS was the character I wanted Leyla to portray. Her beautiful skin, long dark hair with those bangs parted to the same side our fairy, and she is very poised and graceful! I knew she would be perfect! She had to "patiently" wait for me to figure this shoot out, but it couldn't have happened at a better time! SHE was meant for this character!

The Location & Day Of:

Oh man! The weather report had me nervous! Not only was it suppose to rain down in Vegas, but Lee Canyon showed snow and high winds! Yikes!! Wind messes with hair for sure, but also my $40 worth of smoke bombs (found at Hahns Military Surplus.....friendly staff and lots of cool stuff!) would be...gone with the wind you could say, lol. 

Driving up the 95 everything actually looks really clear! We get up to the spot and still....CLEAR!! It was only a bit breezy! There was snow on the ground this time - when we scoped out the location a few weeks back there was nothing. It was windy back then and a little brisk, but not bad. The snow on the ground, along with the breeze and fading sunlight made it rather chilly for all of us....especially my dear Leyla! It was about 38 degrees out there! We kept her warm in the car as long as we could while we got set up. 

The main thing was going to be mounting up the wings. The shape of the wings did not make it easy to mount on a body (they were much more 2D). Instead, Andrew attached them to the tree above with fishing string. This made it easy to just back Leyla up to them. I pinned a couple pieces of her dress up to give it the shape I wanted, looking at my framed "Always" painting by Nene making sure everything was in place. Tripod and camera were set up and ready to go, all we needed was to let off the smoke bombs! Those were so rad!! So much better for outdoor settings then smoke machines! Andrew danced around in the back, trying to stay low, hurting himself a few times and even photo bombing us as you can see! We got our shot within 20 minute and we were out of there!! 

I only chose one image of this because I really wanted to keep this Nene's art. I thought this one was specially enough to leave it solo!

I could not wait to show Brittany & my mom so I snagged this shot from the back of my camera on the way home! You can see what one of them looked like raw! I dont think this was the actual image I used, but you get the point :-)

Love you all! Thank you for reading, watching, following, sharing, etc!! I feel so blessed to have such amazing people in my life who lift me up!

HUGE thank you to Nene Thomas and her team for giving me the OK to recreate this! It was such an honor to work with such a beautiful work of art! This painting inspires me daily! Please visit her Facebook fan page and website! Her work is incredible! She is talented in so many ways!!


Equipment & Settings:
Canon 5d MarkIII
Shutter: 1/50
Aperture: 5.6
ISO: 640