I’ve begun to fold the giant piece of paper I intend to make into the paper dress mark two! This is going to take some time as I have lots of other things to do and it takes a lot of time and effort to fold. I’m having to use the full length of my arms to fold this because it is so big! So this is going to be an on going project of mine.

 

I find that when I make something, whatever it is, I like it to be to the best of my ability. So when I made the original paper dress I knew that it would lead to me wanting to make a better one. There were many things wrong with the original including the small fact that you couldn’t move in it once it was on and that all that was really holding it on was bulldog clips. So I’ve decided to make a new dress, this time making it to the original proportions of the origami paper ball where I got my inspiration for this piece. I am going to use a much larger piece of paper this time and I am going to brace it from the inside with a wire hooped under skirt, which I’ll glue to the paper. I’ll have to make sure this isn’t too heavy or it’ll rip the paper. I am also going to reinforce the paper around the holes where the ribbon will go for lacing it up. This should prevent any rips around the holes. The top part of the dress is going to be a fiddle because it needs to be just right to get that cone shape I want.

This is going to take some time but I am hoping to come out with a dress you could at least walk in!

I did a lot of 3D work for my last project, but some of my favourite pieces were ceramics pieces. I have only learnt the basics of ceramics and I wouldn’t say I’m a natural at it, but I love the glazes and the way they change the whole piece! I was working with the thought of folding in my mind as that was what the project was about.

The origami piece was interesting to make because it didn’t have the sharp folds you can get with paper, but rather rounded folds with made it look more natural. I had a bit of fun with the glaze on this one, using a brush to splatter blue glaze over the  base white.

The bowl is possibly my favourite piece as it has a very natural shape. I used a mould to keep it in shape and I used a turquoise glaze, which makes the surface soft and smooth. The colours that were created by the glaze were really lovely and it came out better than I thought it would.

The deep blue folded piece was inspired by some of the paper folding we had been doing, looking at using single folds. Of cause the clay I used didn’t act in the same way as paper so the folds were a lot more smooth and natural than the paper ones. Even so I am happy with the result and the glaze works really well with piece.

This is a piece I made for college. It took a lot of time and effort and I am pretty pleased with the outcome. The ‘dress’ itself is actually made of two separate pieces of paper. The top of the dress was cut out and wrapped around loosely and crumpled into place. I used bulldog clips to hold in place for the photo shoot. The skirt took a lot more time… about 3 days to be more precise. I used an origami technique that I learned a while ago. Basically you divide the paper horizontally, vertically and diagonally in both directions. Then you fold this into the ‘water bomb base’ shapes, which gives it the pattern. I adapted the original pattern to make this skirt from a design to make an origami ball. The practicality of the dress is nonexistent… which was unfortunate for the model.