30 dresses, April 2012

Snow day distraction, digging around in photo library.
Photos from the 30 Dresses event in April 2012.
The idea was to celebrate spring by wearing a dress or skirt every day and posting in on facebook in the group we created.
My theme that year was to photograph myself around Hudson.
Liberal use of photoshop, of course.
Funny how dated these seem, only 5 years later...

The Allen Street School

Long Alley behind TSL

Basilica

Long Alley with wallpaper boards rescued from a dumpster

Chiffon wrangling at CLC

Diamond STreet

Eddie's Barn in Long Alley, Dresses by Catherine Ogust

the Armory

Saint Winifred

Long Alley

that kooky house with no way to get inside

north Bay

Furgary Boat Club/ Fishing Shack Village

Iron Horse Bar

Hudson Library /orphanage /lunatic Asylum

how to bike in a skirt -Hudson Lighthouse

Paisley at Olana

Hudson Opera House

Partition Street

South Bay wilds

Plumb- Bronson House

Robert Taylor House

Boat Launch on 100th Anniversary of sinking Titanic

Hudson Train Station

at the shop in the Frida window 

Demoiselles D'Avignon Picasso Halloween Costume

Hello there and long time no see again. Quickie post of last year's (2015) Picasso Halloween Costume.     (To see my 2014 effort, click here...as I entered a national contest and probably don't have the rights to my own photos anymore....)

Anyway Had been wanting to do this Picasso costume for a few years now.   I got  Gretchen on board to collaborate with me, and we recruited 4 friends to wear costumes to flesh us out so we'd have the whole painting represented, along with our Picasso in stripes.

Gretchen and I wore cardboard costumes.

The rest of the girls wore painted vintage slips and nighties, along with hand held masks.

(detail from my costume; grommeted cardboard for a corseted torso)

(More photos I still have to dig up show my mask-under-my mask, and details of my feet slippers.)  

how to make a pumpkinhead

Long time, no see (as usual.)

Just stumbled on some photos from last year's Halloween costume that I never got around to sharing.  I think the pumpkinhead portion was pretty successful ...so here's my recipe.



(First, the inspiration. A 1930s photo that was making the rounds a lot last year)


The material used was all crap I had stored in my barn.
Large paper lantern, about 1-2 square yards of 1-inch upholstery foam, and orange tissue paper.

I cut the foam into big petal shaped wedges, shaped the edges a bit,

and then attached them to the lantern using spray mount.  The foam pieces didn't fit exactly but were easy enough to manipulate, with some fudging and fussing.

Then I randomly collaged the tissue paper all over the pumpkin. The tissue gets all wrinkled and adds good texture.  This part was messy.  

You can't see it but I wore a FEZ underneath to hold the head in the right position.  After I figured that out, I cut a mouth opening to line up with my eyes, using a large serrated knife.

I also made a little burlap stem for the top, even though it doesn't show. It was perfect for holding the witch hat on; I just used a 10-12 inch long hat pin and drove it through the hat and stem. 

As for the rest of the costume, I played around with a few different ideas

but would up doing something that was old-timey, classic,  and comfortable.

The final result, in sepia:

P.S.  The old fashioned bag was made with a home-made stencil

and I saved all the leftover foam scraps, which I am keeping out of the landfill by using in this year's costume.    Stay tuned.