Ultimate Bridal Fashion Fix: Costume Designer's Special Hand Painting

For the past month I have been designing As You  Like It, the first leg of the Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory Season. The final scene demands a big reveal when Rosalind returns in a 'Forest ' wedding dress to marry Orlando. The design of the dress has gone through some changes, but we finally settled on a classic vintage wedding dress. A few days in the director felt it was too 'white', so I set about hand painting vines and leave all over the dress. I had seen some beautiful gowns from the 1930s era with similar embellishment; used to contour the body and then stopping just short of the knee

Have a look at my pinterest board for the show for the full list of inspirations.

The dress came from Heartfelt Vintage, on Alma Vale Road, and already had a lovely floral motif woven into the fabric.

I started to slowly build the design around the areas I was confident that I wanted leaves. As it progressed I decided I was happy with how it was...and kept going!

This is not the first time I have hand painted a garment, back in my days as a Cloth Magazine designer, I tried this out on a dress creating a style reminiscent of floral designs on porcelain jugs, inspired by Mary Katrantzou.

the Cloth gang

Photo Amanda Thomas

If you want to try this technique yourself, all you need is an assortment of fabric paints, some turpentine to thin the oil based paints and white spirit to clean the brushes.

Theatre Design: 'As You Like It' Spring Tour 2014

Photos Mark Douet

Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory is touring As You Like It this Spring. If you want to see where we are going and when, have a look here!

Mark Douet has taken some amazing prod shots of this one, he really is super good!

In the meantime, I am busy designing Arcadia, a completely different beast, but extremely refreshing to tackle a modern masterpiece in that space.

Behind the Scenes: Photoshoot Molly Mishi May Bridal Shoot

Setting up in the morning, fighting the optical illusion of the brick wallpaper, and assistant Sophie wallpapering a box for the group shot. Note the rather obvious joins in the wallpaper highlighted by the side light from the expansive windows.

behind the lens: Amanda shoots Sarune

This is a collection of behind the scenes snaps and the finished product, to give you an idea of how skilled Amanda Thomas is at lighting and shooting, and showing off the skills of our wonderful photoshoot team.

the finished item: Sarune, Photo Amanda Thomas

sorting the group shot pose

seamless wallpaper, wallpaper box in use and perfect posing, Photo Amanda Thomas

Photo Amanda Thomas

Photo Amanda Thomas

Photo Amanda Thomas

Styling: Molly Mishi May Bridal Photoshoot

Photo Amanda Thomas

At the end of last year I styled and Art Directed my first Bridal shoot for designer Molly Mishi May, shot by Amanda Thomas.

The results were published in Elegant Magazine (above), and below is a sneak peak!

Photo Amanda Thomas

Photo Amanda Thomas

Photo Amanda Thomas

Molly is a fresh contemporary bridal designer, creating interesting styles and shapes around the needs and wishes of each bride. It was a challenge to find a new way of styling and shooting Bridal. Amanda, Molly and I recce'd a number of venues and chucked together various ideas until settling on a crisp cool setting of brick wall, allowing the dresses to 'do the talking'. The wall was in fact wallpaper with a brick effect, taped to a wall. Somehow, in Amanda's shots, the joins of the paper became invisible and no post production was needed for the background.

Great British Sewing Bee and Spring Sewing Startup

Although I don't feel a TV judge can interact with a pair of men's trousers as well as they can with a gorgeous gooey chocolate cake, I am excited to welcome the return of The Great British Sewing Bee, if for nothing else than enlightening us all the to the love and toil that goes into creating great garments.

As a celebration of that fact, I am going to put out some 'from scratch' fashion fixes over the coming weeks to show you how you too can achieve great results and finally use up that gorgeous fabric you bought a while back but haven't done anything with! from tops to t shirts, skirts and scarves, Fix Up Look Chic is going to take home sewing to the next level and start from scratch!

Here is a little teaser of the things you're going to make over the next few weeks. All Photos taken by the wonderful Amanda Thomas, shot at the Bristol City Museum and art gallery

Photo Amanda Thomas

Simple sleeveless tops with wild colours and prints, adding panels down the sides of dresses in complimentary colours...

Photo Amanda Thomas

Photo Amanda Thomas

t shirts and tops from scratch, ruffle skirts and sleeveless shirts, all in time for Spring.

Photo Amanda Thomas

As You Like It Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory 2014 season

 The production shots have come out for As You Like It, with my 1930s set and costumes!

Have a look here and compare with my drawings! Photos were taken by the extremely talented Mark Douet.

Photoshoot: Fair Isle and Nordic Knits

Last Summer I styled the photoshoots for the craft book Fair Isle and Nordic Knits. Although our model sizzled a bit in her knitwear in high summer, we managed to create a really cool skandi feel to the shoots and here is a tiny sample of what we came up with.

The Author; "Nicki Trench is one of the leading figures in the revival and promotion of home crafts. As well as teaching, lecturing, and feature writing on knitting, crochet, sewing, cake decorating, and hen keeping, she is the founder of Laughing Hens, the UK’s leading online yarn store, and Rooster Yarns. Some of her books include Geek Chic Crochet, Cute & Easy Crocheted" 

(http://www.rylandpeters.com/US/ourshop/craft/fair-isle-nordic-knits)

The book is available from April 30th, 2014

Silent January

Apologies for Silent January…We were moving house!

The New Year has already brought a collection of creative projects, once I recovered from the Blind Tiger (see below), I am currently designing the Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory Season in Bristol, a production for the Shakespeare Unplugged Festival at The Egg in Bath and a few exciting other theatre projects in the Pipeline. I have just started a new illustration commission for Cico Books and cracking on with some new Wedding Invitations! 

Happy New Year!

Event Design, The Colston Hall, Blind Tiger NYE 2013

This is the story of New Year's Eve, 2013.

For the past few years, I have been involved in designing the pop up Bar, The Blind Tiger for a production company called MAYK

This year, the Colston Hall decided they'd like a piece of the action for their New Year's Eve celebrations. I took on the design role alongside friend and fellow stage designer,  Liesel Corp.

The theme was inspired by Indian Weddings, Moroccan Souks and New York Cafes, full of light and colour. Liesel was inspired by MIA's touring set; the huge discs that seemed to replicate religious symbols but pimped up with lights and colour.

Into the workshop we went, Liesel drew the shapes, we then projected them onto MDF and drew them out. Then came the Jigsaw. It took a little while but the results were awesome. 

We even created headboards for daybeds, that the punters could lounge on.

We had access to the venue the day before and had a wonderful team of helpers who got the job going. We had Raj Tents strewn about the room, which were Gazebos from Asda, stripped of their awning and draped in coloured chiffon.

Our cut out circles were painted white and then filled in with coloured cellophane to create stain glass window effect.

They were then hoisted onto the prosc arch to form the centrepiece for our stage.

To make a very high ceilinged room feel intimate, we draped fabric from the rig. A bit of clever lighting design later…and our exotic hideaway was created.