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Colours For Cameron
October 12, 2012
Colours For Cameron, 24L x 8H x 6D inches, mixed media on quilted muslin over cardboard pages
“Colours For Cameron” (Canadian spelling!) is composed over five deconstructed heavy-duty cardboard children’s books bought at a dollar store. The Monte head-templates were covered with inexpensive everyday items, so I splurged on unique notions like the $10 monkey button sewn on the ‘Brown’ page, and the cute little cars and tractors that Cameron loves. Some of the fabrics were fairly expensive, but there are enough remnants to make other similar-style projects in the future.
Each page is a quilted muslin sleeve pulled over the cardboard, and colored fabrics divide each page at the base, where they are all sewn and glued together. Rubber letters were covered with various fabrics, and each page has stuffed colored pockets on the outer edge, inviting chubby little fingers to open them..
Since I only had a vague plan; just resolving the design as it developed, I’m glad the cover was last, because it was much trickier and took three tries. I went the extra mile to use nice, seamless thick cardboard for the final layer of binding, which looked great, but upon trying to open the book, it would not! That beautiful, straight piece ended up being bent over a table edge at every page. It’s always worth the effort to make useful things beautiful, but if the beauty impedes on the practically, then it’s not so beautiful after all, is it?!
I found a perfect black, 100% cotton with white dots embroidered on it, planning to paint each dot different colors, but when the whole thing was assembled, edited that out. Enough is enough with all the buttons and textures sticking out. Velcro-ed handles keep the book closed, and also makes it comfortably portable.
Other details: I saved more $ by making my own piping by sewing black stretch-velvet over piping rope, which can be purchased in bags of 12 foot lengths or more. Piping was carefully glued around each plastic googly-eye — not hot glue; crazy glue or equivalent. The googly eyes were $1 store items; much more expensive at craft/sewing stores. Eyes with piping were gently inserted then hot-glued into holes of the Monte face template, then after hot-gluing the face onto the muslin page, each was also lined with black piping to tidy. The final page has three squeakers (removed from dollar store dog toys) placed under the face.
Categories: 3D, children, design, experimental, innovation, mixed media, Smile | Comments Off on Colours For Cameron
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