Clodagh Harrington: May 2012

When we initially started the project I chose the words “rumour”, “indulgent” and “delicate”. After doing some brainstorming I decided to change “rumour” to the word “reveal” but to keep the other two the same. I did some swatches that I felt linked with those three words best and also did a mood board dedicated to each word.

After presenting my work, we had to decide on one word to follow through with. I chose the word “delicate” because I had come across some interesting ways to show delicacy with unusual materials. I came across some glue gun socks and glue gun chandeliers by Esma Pacal Turam. This inspired me to make my own glue gun chandelier for the 3D piece.

My 3D chandelier's structure was secured by a lamp shade that I had taken apart a little bit. I felt that the pieces in the middle that kept the lamp shade together were a bit too weak so I replaced them with wood. I covered them in glitter because my piece needed to sparkle. The next few steps were fun because I had to make the chandelier look lavish and opulent. I made circles out of hot glue and joined them together to cover the top and decorate the chandelier, made a chain of hot glue discs and dangled them and then I also made clay balls and rolled them in glitter to keep the glitter in the piece so that it didn't look out of place just in one area.

After doing some drawings and pulling out pieces we liked best from our 3D piece we were then told we had to make a neckpiece or a skirt inspired by our 3D piece and after a few mistakes and some advice, it became clear that it was best for me to make a neckpiece. A very posh, exaggerated and opulent neckpiece.

I was advised to use a clear plastic material in my piece and then draw designs using my hot glue gun onto the piece. I made a few swatches using this method then decided on the design I preferred the most. I made a base of the clear plastic material cut into the shape of my own chandelier and glued them together. The shape of the chandelier was enlarged for these pieces so that I could layer the smaller shapes on top of them but so that you could still see the actual shape of the chandelier underneath. So I cut out smaller shapes and recreated the designs that I had made in my swatches. I made a base layer then a glue gun designed layer for the collar as well so that I had a bit of structure that was easy to handle underneath.

The back of the piece had to be kept open so that someone could get in and out of it so I made chains form the glittery balls and what was meant to be like a button hole out of hot glue. Then fit them into eachother. For the neck I felt there needed to be a bit more structure so I made a chain of glue discs and glued a snap fastener into them and made another glue circle so that chain is fed through the circle and fastened or unfastened for it to be opened or closed. For elaborate decoration I made the glittery balls and draped them around the front of the neckpiece.

I had great fun making the neckpiece because, even though some of it was a bit tedious, it came together really quickly and became what I had imagined.