Kiss costume

Starting with a too-small-for-him Halloween bat costume, i'm attempting a Gene Simmons bat costume.
Next: cardboard shin and forearm shields, spiked shoulder pads/guards amd eventually a breast plate, for which gummed parcel tape is the key. It's a sort of quick papier mache technique.

Using a bradawl to pierce a pattern on the arm and shin guards, and then using a few brass paper fasteners to look like studs, all important in the rock/ heavy metal look.
On the back, strips of gummed tape to protect the wearer and the fabric it'll be attached to.

Chinese Art

This is described as a photograph though it appears like a painting. It is by Zhang Peng, entitled Gui Fei. Executed in 2007, it is one of 3 highly contrived images of Chinese girls exploring the courtship of death. The image of the girls with plastic bags over their heads is for me the most disturbing. They appear to be just finding the plastic bags in the natural setting, a commentary on our voracious manufacture, consuming and pollution of the planet. Not only is the semblance of play highly disturbing, but also the uniform, both in the sense of what they wear but also the uniformity of action, finding, playing with and eventually placing the bag ovet their heads. There is a cycle of action and there is a horrifying inevitability about it. The pathetic foreboding sky and dull pallet of the image is nightmarish and hints at the dysfunctional unconscious of a humanity now well divorced from its nature. There is significance too in the gender of the children and the communist red scarf.

Pondering

A small applique project for moi, a phone pouch, depicting Moomintroll and Snorkmaiden in a rowing boat.

These little creatured are deceptively simple - the designs are very well executed.
Tove Jansson died not long back but the strength of the characters and her designs still hold. For the more recent publications for young children from Puffin, the colour pallet is delightful. Both my boys (2&6yrs old) absolutely love them. I am looking forward to reading the original books to my eldest very soon.

But as far as this project goes, its a case of bringing together what felt scraps and colourful embroidery thread I have and seeing if I can do the little design justice.

I'm blocking colours at this stage, to see if my adapted pallet works and how well the felt will work as a material for the whole project.