Kandylane Enchanted: (E) Peace

Grief, mourning & sorrow. We have all been at a point in our lives in which we are burdened with a situation or affliction we believe to be hopeless. Our hearts have felt broken and irreparable, our minds- irremediable, our spirits- crushed. Some have lost people they love, pets they adored, jobs they worked so hard for, houses they made homes. Some just don’t feel like they fit in or belong, which causes severe pain, confusion, misunderstandings and many times, irrational thinking which can start the vicious cycle of grief all over again. Sometimes you might have an overwhelming feeling of impending & infinite doom.

This project started with my amazing, kind and beautiful niece, Taylor. When I have projects in the back of my mind, I try to gain inspiration as to who should model for me. Many of the women in my life come into my mind for different creation and Taylor was one of them. 6 months ago she lost her adorable dog “Pixie” who she had for 11 or so years. Pixie was always wearing pink and loved and comforted her family. After her death, Taylor even had a pink pixie “fairy” tattooed on her shoulder hoping that it would help with some of the healing process. This thought of commemorating Pixie’s life through a photo shoot blossomed into something so personal and emotion for me as well.

With National Breast Cancer Awareness Month coming in October, the color pink fit right in along with the inspiration driving this shoot- loss & mending broken hearts. It was right around this time of year back in 2007 that my sister, Shelsi, after spending January through August treating a massive tumor in her chest, learned she had a large tumor in her brain as well. She lost a lot of time in the hospital, lost her hair 2 times and lost other things that will affect her for the rest of her life….but the most important part in that last sentence was “the rest of her life”. She still has her life, and we still have her in our lives (which will be the theme behind my next shoot in October! Make sure you stay tuned for that one!).

My other sister in Heaven, Kandyse Layne also came into my mind. She would have been 26 on October 1^st this year. My heart is so full of love right now and my eyes are filled with tears writing about her. Trying to imagine what she would have looked like now. If she would have been a blondy like our mom, me and Shelsi, or if she would have taken on dark hair, blue eyed features like my daddy and brother. I know that she inspires me all the time. Every time I get pictures of cute sleeping smiling babies, I always know that she’s helping me. We all lost her in in this physical world, but her spirit still lives on and I know that we will all see her again. That reunion will be spectacular!

So many friends and family come into my mind when gaining inspiration for this creation, including my good friends who lost their daughter at the beginning of this year. Little Savannah would have been 3 years old in a few days. She is another sweet spirit who lives on through her beautiful family.

There is so much about this whole process- the dress, the wings, the flowers, the burnt scenery that has meaning behind it and I will write about all of those thoughts below.

Enjoy the next 3 pieces to this enchanted photography gallery. Pink has always been a color that symbolizes our hearts and love. For me, “she’s” like an angel sent from Heaven to comfort us and bring peace in times of loss and affliction.

Introducing….

The Enchanted Pixie of Peace

So now that you have the story behind the entire thought and creation, let me tell you the stories behind the set & our special day, and let me just start by saying that it is 4:30am right now and I just can’t break away from this darn computer! Here it goes!

I started off gathering this gorgeous tulle from an online garage sale. At that point, I was just looking for fabric and silk flowers of all kinds. When we decided to create this scene, visions of a wild pink puffy skirt kept coming into my mind. I ended up ordering a petticoat from DHgate.com and I had an “EASY” idea in mind, which was to cut 2 slits about an inch wide and a cm. apart, so that foot long bunched up piece of tulle could slide in, and then repeat this MANY TIMES. The original garage sale buy of tulle was about 9 yards. I ended up buying and using another 50 yards!!! I think I cut about 600 slits into that petticoat. My amazing friend, Leyla came and helped me cut and stuff some of it too! It would go by so much faster when I had help so I am soooooo sooooo thankful for that. My boys actually helped me with the last of it too!

As I was piecing this dress together I kept thinking to myself how amazing it was that this tulle had been ripped to shreds, but was now coming together to make something so beautiful. Of course I thought of how sometimes WE are the ones that feel like we have been torn into pieces, but when we finally get up and dust off, we can choose to come out of our trial even more beautiful than before. When I showed Taylor a picture of the dress, she said the exact same thing!

Next I found this beautiful corset at the Goodwill for $4! Woohoo! It happened to match perfectly with the skirt. I really wanted to add a little extra flair to it so I twisted the tulle, hot gluing each spiral to a piece of fabric to make it look like a little flower. I added the bling in for some extra fun. I did the same thing with her hair piece as well.

Taylor and I began our search for makeup ideas we could share with Brittany. I really was not having ANY inspiration with this. Most of the pictures I saw just didn’t click until Taylor came across a masquerade mask painted onto a face. I knew that this was it! I immediately bought our supplies! It just went with the theme. And you can see in the pictures, Brittany did a SPECTACULAR job!! I think this is one of the most beautiful costume makeup pieces! Thank you again Brit! I love you!!

The wings…..I almost just wanna move on and not talk about them at all. This was my 3^rd set. I had so many ideas that I spent several hours on, that just didn’t work the way I wanted, so I ended up just doing some twirls and twists in wire and left it at that. Part of me wonders why I put myself through this with the wings. I love the idea of having wings in all of my creations because wings are magical, but this probably could have worked either way! Live and learn I guess!

The flowers!! Even though I had seen oversized flowers before and thought they’d be cool, they were also something that Taylor saw as well. She is a Pinterest queen! We are totally on the same page. We started making them a while back, but I didn’t want a dozen giant flowers hangin around my room too long, so we actually finished them the day of the shoot! They are made with tissue paper cut into flower petals (4 petals of 3 sizes). Starting with the smallest petals, bunch them into a bouquet & tape around the bottom. Keep adding the next sizes up while continuing to tape the bottom until it has several layers. Then put a small circle of tissue paper in the middle for a pop of color. We then scrunched the entire flower and let it flop back open. It took a while to get it right, but I think we achieved what we were looking for. The stem was easy. Just green tissue paper spay glued onto PVC pipe that was cut into different lengths. The leaf wasn’t too bad. Again we cut tissue paper into this leaf shape, used wire for the center vein leaving a stem that we cold hot glue to the PVC pipe, and then spray-glued two together. V-walla! We had our flowers

So that brings us to the actual shoot. We finally had everything together, and had just packed it all into my van around 5:20 (already 20 minutes after I had wanted to leave) and noticed that I had a flat tire!! Really?? So then we swapped our stuff into our other car and hit the road up to Mount Charleston. We’re driving up there watching gorgeous sunrays melt over the mountains. It was breathtaking. We get to our spot, start unpacking, knowing that we will lose light quickly and I notice that my bag of supplies for hair makeup, dress, flowers, etc was left in the van when we made the swap! Again….REALLY??? Thankfully my wonderful hubby had some zip-ties to connect the flowers to the stems. We were totally all good even with all of our bumps in the road.

We got a power converter this week so that we could hook up the fog machine to the car…MUCH better than driving with a stinky generator….am I right Brit?? Lol. Andrew planted all the flowers for me while Taylor and I made sure lighting was right on. The setting was just amazing- light and clouds in the sky, beautiful oversized pink flowers, and fog creeping on the ground around burnt cactus and a beautiful pink pixie. The lighting was low, but it gave a cool effect when she twirled the dress. Lots of movement! Every bit of it was perfect. I wouldn’t have had it any other way!

This project has consumed my bedroom, my time and the time of many others, please feel free to share, pin, tweet, comment and help me to spread it around for others to take part in.

BIG X's & O's!!

Making the dress....