The shoe is finished - but where is the old woman!?

The shoe is finished! I had a massive festive surge last night and was up until 1.30 am paper mâching and working out how to fix the tea bags on to the shoe. Not to mention the oranges!!

I then began in earnest this morning putting it all together. I had decided to try and make little trees out of the tea bags and the paper mâché but couldn't work out how to fix them, or quite what the point was!!


I used my concoction of the flour, water & tea from the bags(!) to stick and mould the tea bags to the shoe. I attatched the tea- trees to add some height and added lots more tea bags all around the shoe. The tea bags have added some interesting texture to the shoe and I really like the variations in the colours it brings. I also decided to fill in the top of the shoe and covered the shoelace in paper mâché.

I like the purple stitching on the teabags. They look like the tea bags could possibly be stitched to the shoe.















I then applied the oranges, attaching them with the speckled tea glue. They were easy to apply which surprised me. this was dramatically changing the appearance of the shoe and it was quite unrecognisable. The size hadn't changed a lot and nor had the sole so you can still tell it once was a shoe. I would like to do this exercise again with the other shoe to contrast what different things you can do with exactly the same shoe. I wanted to keep the dimensions roughly the same as I thought with the materials I was using it would be very easy to completely change the shape and really you could have had any object underneath all that - I wanted there to still be some link to the fact it was shoe shaped!













The shoe was beginning to take shape and I feel it has a kind of tropical garden feel to it. I initially thought the oranges would look like scales but they look almost flower like to me now. The lace was paper mached and then I used my final tool which was some left over nail varnish from last summer. I had a rather citrus yellow, a lime green and a deep red. These I used liberally on the scrunched up paper which transformed it into looking like roses. I did not have the space available to do the Andy Goldsworthy effect of closely placed paper of the same colour so I am going to try that in assignment 4. I decided not to varnish the curls of newspaper at the front of the shoe as I like the different colours that are apparent from the waybthe paper is folded. I put stripes of yellow and green on the shoe lace and looped it around the shoe like a snake or a hose!



















I finally put some whole slices of orange in the foot part offend shoe that looked like they were growing out of the shoe. I varnished the peel on these in green and red to make them look more interesting and to blend in and to tie the colours together. I was beginning to feel that the process was nearly over. I had finally decided not to sketch my ideas out before hand and to let the creation evolve as I felt this was more in keeping with the brief. However I really enjoyed sketching the finished project and have several ideas for sketches that I wish to explore further. These include drawing the original shoe during the stages of the development, making a collage of the finished shoe using the same materials as on the 3d model. Making a stitched picture of the finished model using different textured materials.

Finally today I drew the finished shoe. The following pictures are of the original shoe and the finished shoe as well as both sketches. Hopefully I will add more sketches if I have the opportunity to do them. I have really enjoyed this project and feel it has answered the brief. The " new shoe" is radically different to the original shoe in colour and texture and use and yet you can still just about see what it once was. I have really enjoyed working with the materials I used and will use the grainy Mâché glue again as I think it looks interesting. I also very much like the effect of the tea bags and think their colours and texture is something I will revisit. The same for the oranges and it has definitely made me curious to work with more with fruit. I am looking forward to my research topic and to the following assignments looking in detail at the make up of fabrics.













I will add the sketches of the original shoe when I can upload them. They are in my sketch book.