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 5th)! 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.
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| Ouch... |
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!
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.
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| Planting the first Flower! |
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| 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!!
