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Bonus Video: Creating a Concept Piece: Start to Finish

today I'm going to share with you a part of my creative process and this is something that I don't do very often because it's a very personal thing where I come up with my inspiration and how I turn it into a concept and then create an actual finish print from that so it's exciting to be able to do this and bring to you a little bit of my world and hopefully can inspire you to start creating things you know that you absolutely love recently I was looking through a magazine and I found an image of a giant flower and it was a fashion magazine there's a girl standing in front of it and I thought wow you know how incredible would it be to actually place the baby in something inside of something so beautiful like a giant flower so for the last couple of weeks have been looking and tossing up ideas on looking for materials that I could possibly create this giant flower from so I'm going to take you through that process off finding my inspiration turning it into something that we can use and ...

then photographing our baby inside the prop and for me this is where I get my inspiration and my ideas for for my award prince and every year I like to push myself creatively in inter print awards not four awards but just to be able to create something you know personal something that I love and push myself because the further I pushed myself the bed of my craft and my art become so first thing I probably need to do is transfer my flower onto another piece of paper without my lady and then what I'm gonna do is photograph that piece of paper and logic and transfer it to my phone sheeting so that we can start to trace out our leaves and how they're going to bend and curve so that they create that beautiful three dimensional look so I just opened my image up in photo shop the first thing I'm going to do is crop it so that it's nice and square and if we make it one hundred centimetres by hundreds animated then it's going to give us a really good guideline teo get it that um that size that way want which is roughly a meter in diameter soldiers turn it slightly and re size so that it all fits now I want to get rid of a lot of those great earns because we are going to be printing it on plain white paper so we don't want to print those yucky tones but we do want to make out blacks nice and heavy so we can see that outlines when we tracing so in a new copy layer I'm just going to go into my curves and I'm gonna bring in my black and white sliders just to really push those highlights and then knows blacks behold the olcay in and move that slide off so I can see where I'm setting tau lose all that detail from the wise and then bring my blacks in now I can see those coming back into the image and there's our shape merge those down the next thing I'm going to do is bring in one of my guides from the side so that I can see where the centuries because the local print shop can't print and made a buy maeda they can print up to an a o size which is roughly twelve hundred mil by eight hundred forty mill so what I'm going to do is split it down the middle and print half on one sheet of paper and the other half on another shape and then we're gonna put them together dragging one of my guides from the side into the middle of the image I'm looking at my ruler at the top where it says fifty centimetres and now what I can do is open up a new um a new blank document I'm going to my presets down to international paper and it won't let me select a oh but it will let me select a three which is because it's all to scale and when you're looking at those different sizes it shouldn't be an issue and the print lab should be able to print that as an o instead of a three so just go okay and we'll go back to our original image and just with square marquis to going to copy that command sea and pace that onto a large document and we can increase the size of that if we need to wait bring it over we'll let it overlap a little bit way will merge those in france saved those teo the desktop more pop them onto a usb to take down to be printed flour left on and go back to a blank document come back over here and will select the other side of the image I could have just select inverse but maurice elect command c copy and paste industry sais that as well so it fits mitch there's and save as flower rush here we'll save that one as flower okay now we can go off from print case we've got a prince back from the printer we have to eh oh size prince which is like I mentioned before roughly that twelve hundred mil on the longest side in about eight hundred fifty mil on the of the wits together they're going to make the diameter of my flower roughly about amita so we'll just stick close together and then what I'm gonna do is number each pedal and we're going to place our foam or are other materials over the top and trace out trace around the pedal to cut it out the reason that we've printed we've made the flower of this size is that if I had made it any bigger and I loved in the original image how big it was and how small you could actually make the baby in the centre of it but for me with being able to enter this into print awards it would be quite difficult to do this as a single captured image which is part of the rules so if I had made this any bigger I would have to shoot it as a compass it because I would have to stand on sale ladder or a box or something like that shoot the whole flour and then hop down place the baby inside it and then zoom in and shoot the baby separately and put the two images together but unfortunately I'm not allowed to do that when when entering print competitions because it needs to be single capture hopefully the rules will change in the future eh so that we can make shooting images like this safe for babies but for the time being we just have tio go with what what the rules are and make it work so my three materials that I'm gonna use the other phone sheeting and when we place that over the pattern we can actually see that through through this so that's gonna be nice and easy these are going to be my bass pedals because it's a lot stiffer than the other material the next one is going to be the interfacing and this is just from a fabric store and it's ein on interfacing so again we can see that through there the island side's got a bit of a shiny look to it so that's actually going to be the side that's facing down because thie the other side's got a beautiful texture to it and and that's gonna look great cold up around the baby with this it's going to be easy to mold it and get that beautiful curve in the flowers like in the image and then this material this is just un delay that goes under safe floating floorboards and this is just left over from when we did our studio so it's actually going to be perfect because it's really soft really pliable and we're gonna be able to mold that nice and tight around the baby and because it's soft it's um it's not going to cause any discomfort whatsoever way might start with numbering out pedals first couple to keep it together you know it's not going to be exactly the same as the picture but this is just going to be a rough guide and what I'm going to do as we move along is designed in a way so that the baby is completely scented within the flower something that I have some few issues about before we go any further I might actually mark with niko the center so that I'm not gonna be um getting confused way these pedals are going to join up way might make this pittle up the back here and number one and two three four and five no I get confused on that I'm just going to write the number on the inside this is just going to be a guide so that when I'm actually cutting or using my knife we can be a little bit more precise with some with the points and the curves so obviously we want this to come all the way down into the center so I'd say roughly back here will be the center of the flower this one is gonna be number five way think we might be able to fit number two in here you're gonna sort of tying together underneath I'm going slightly change the shape of this one roughly like this and what I'm going to do is leave start to leave now a little bit of wits at the base of my pedals so that back and fold them together to give shape to them and hope called about number one we'll be out of fit number three and here is well also start teo overlap way come intothe don't think I'm gonna get another one of that fact that's four bass pedals now so the next pedals that I'm going to do not necessarily gonna you know be the exact same shape off this but it's giving me a really good god and afterwards I'm actually going to create a proper template off my pedals that that will be you know a much easier guard to follow if I wanted to make this again in the future several five we might come in here and start here six seven and eight and this one's gonna be a little tricky because it's kind of curled in so I'm gonna have to really bring those that pedal out nine and this one I think I'm going to combine these two to one wait leave it with that for the time being so this fabric want these to be outta cohen think that'll be a good thing looks like it's position it a little differently so we might actually kind of shift the way it is and bring it back toward the center you love the odd placement that level these pedals were gonna start working our way back into the center but this pedal out here because it's so large I'm going to continue to use thie interfacing for these in the pedals but because this one here is quite large it's going to come right out around we'll call that eleven and I'll use the phone sheeting for that one and then we'll come in we'll go eleven twelve thirteen fourteen and then these three in here they're going to be more molded around the baby so they need to be nice and soft which is this fabric that I'm going to use over here the the underlay a florin underlay it's so soft so spongy and it's some it's going to work really well to sort of fold around a little I wanted to use the foam again for this fun because I can see that actually needs to be his part as faras the picture goes it's quite a support flower so it's going to help hold all these other pedals on top needs to these nice and strong so here's our center I'm going nice and wide across here because what I'm going to do is cut out a diamond to fold those corners those edges in together which will give it that nice firm um sort of structure to come together but we can always trim it if there's too much anyway you better have more than curly facing you're seeing me do this for the very first time never actually tried to create anything like this before so I'm gonna make some mistakes and I'm not probably the most crafty person when it comes to this this kind of thing occasionally I like to make things but um yeah it's a little out of my comfort zone but it's kind of good be interesting to see how the finished image looks because I can visualize it and often you know what we can visualize isn't necessarily how things turn out a lot of the times they can be better and sometimes they can be not so successful but it's the fun and trying which is really great okay now we're up to our soft fabric sixteen seventeen so what I might do now start cutting them out individually I'm going to use a stanley knife from my sheets of farm and I'm going to use the scissors obviously for the dinner the thinner in facing and the underlay so I'll grab all of those bits and pieces together and we'll get started okay we've cut out all of our pieces um and I've I've put them all together and in their styles which is great but what I want to do before we start placing it together is just have a play with a bit of this to see the best way to get it to sit together and to create that curl so I've got all my bits and pieces together I've got some masking tape some really strong tape double sided tape I've got some adhesive volker that means we can just you know move in place the pedals if we need teo and obviously says is awesome and fabric and cross but what I was going to play with here is creating a bit of a curl to the pedals so if we just cut a couple of little triangles not large ones I'm thinking this is going to be the best way to bring out pedal together to give it that shape which is gonna be really great and then just some masking tape on the back give us a beautiful shape just get a little bit of a curl to the pedal tio I'm thinking maybe seriously wait can put a little bit of a bend in it that way to put some more shape into it which I think is gonna look really really good and I might even see if I can find something a little bit smaller than that teo teo give it a tight ako yeah I think this is going really great start to sort of pinch think that our petals together at the top as well and they're gonna look really good so that's just one of the leftover pieces that I had waken start now putting things together and I'm going to do this fairly quickly because I think it's gonna be like a little bit of shuffling just to get in position draw it and see how they guard obviously someone going to sit above and below others to give it that effect and what I've done because I know that when I start firing these I'm going to start to lose my numbers underneath so I've labeled the pedal accordingly on my picture as well which is a great diagram so I don't lose track now ready to start putting out next layer on top and I've got my little diagram that's going to help me but again we're just kind of going to go around work our way around and place them where I think they're gonna look best and keeping everything really scented some guests start um obviously the ones that are on the bottom and then work my way around to the ones that are on the top okay so this one here in the middle it's gonna come in like this but we need to gather the center so what we'll do is spin it over because we've got the beautiful texture on the other side as opposed to the shiny side which is that I'm onside so place it in here like this because he's a smaller petals can actually just put the one slip in to bring them together steady putting a split and just see what happens when we bring the sides in place it in like that which I think is gonna look for the good reason I'm using masking tape as opposed to say a staple gun or something like that is is that we are actually putting a baby in here so it needs to be nice and secure but it also needs to not have any dangerous elements that potentially sort of break through any of the fabrics and become shop oh hazardous great so the gun is still on and we'll just peel these guns out of order put them in getting them nice and and position so we can see those those pedal definitions around the outside this one here we might actually have to sort of like hold together down here at the bottom so I'm gonna really work this crease in just to get it to sit nice and numb and flat so it doesn't sit two apart it's going great okay just looking at it now going into the next layer andi still creating that nice well in the middle for where we want our baby to go I'm just going to make a couple of little alterations so we didn't leave extra room on the edge about pity pedals when we were cutting them so I'm just going to trim them a little bit which is um I mean just going to make a couple of little sort of adjustments and alternative can see it you can see this piece in here hanging out and I want this to come down little slut so I'm actually gonna trim that and I've cut that a lot wilder than what I originally thought that I would need it today I'm just gonna cut us here and it's gonna make it a lot easier to stick began down in here there we go look at that and you know pedal here what I'm gonna do is do you want that to be curled over but now that I've got it in place and now it's gonna sit slot and I can get that beautiful well in the middle and still have that girl detail once we put everything in place that's when we will continue to sort of make all that peddles into that shape that we want them to be and we've got ten down in here we come across a little bit with their other ones so I'm gonna sort of slide it in here I'm gonna give it too much of a I call my coat around this way instead of continued to sort of have those those variations there I wanna go on twelve's gonna come in on sarge bringing together way to soothe ok one last one to come in here before we put a soft delays in and I'll just come up in here like this that's gonna look great but because he's got such a wide age I'm gonna put two slits have you quite a lot of hot glue they just want to make sure that this is a really secure and it's not going anywhere way you can see my pencil onto here I can get rid of that wow this is looking pretty amazing I'm absolutely loving it okay we might put in and how lost little life and cm see how it goes so I've got two small ones in the movie with the larger one and what I'm thinking with these is that they can really be gathered in because they're just so soft and I want them to mold around the baby and and cover any little indecency is that we don't need to see but once she's or he is in here you know we can line this with some beautiful soft walls and caught napping in the base and make it really comfortable for the baby so you might start with that two small ones and then replace our lodge one in there as well thinking I need more on this side it's a fair bit of detail going on over there so I might leave our larger one for this side and kind of just gather these small ones there's no rhyme or reason it's just kind of gathering it in there like that way can even bend it out as well we need to I have that kind of folding over just to give it some body this way way yeah okay so here is our ball you always have to paddle about finishing touches now that we've actually finished making this pretty awesome flower who what kind of visualize the way it was gonna look but it's it's actually a lot better than what I was anticipating so that's definitely a bonus this is my fake baby I shouldn't be several from sorry and I use her for a lot of things that I'm setting out purely for size she's not as flexible obviously is a newborn baby and she's got lovely hard hands and feet and doesn't stay in position so I just basically use her too to know if I'm creating a space that's large enough so I'm going to go ahead and put her in the middle and I have a look at it from above which is where I plan on shooting it from um because then I'll be able to see if there's anything I need to do any alterations I need to make or anything I need to add to it so we'll pop perrin and no sort of you know specific way but just basically to have a look at the size and the shape of where our baby is going to go and the beauty of the pedals is that I can use cloth nappies or anything to kind of help support the baby from underneath these pedals and you won't see them but um now when I kind of look up maybe position here in different wife I was going to shoot from here you always want to face facing up do anything covering her face but as a scented kind of piece um probably thinking I might need something extra down here only because this is such a you know a huge pedal that feeling a little off balance so I might actually just add another one down in here not the same but just just a larger pedal into this area and then that's going to give me that more circular shape so add another pedal I'm going to make it out of the same stuff is this this some thiss on on stiffening and we're gonna add it down here and I mean I'm not going to follow a plan or anything like that we're just going freehand it just to sort of bring it down out into here and make it more of a circle and it's going to be quite big because I wanted to come in underneath these two pedals and then they'll give us some more space teo really be able to support that baby as well and to give it that nice curve we might actually popped through it's perfect right here is gonna slide it in underneath all of these pedals see if we can fill the space oh wow no it's looking nice and full it's perfect way so we just had some some hot glue and keep it in place it's gonna be a little tricky to get old way down in there see how his blue eyes that I think has just finished it off and made it really nice and even so that's going to set there and all I want to do now is just kind of mold a couple of these harder edges and soften a couple of these edges around here and obviously you know a lot of the time when you're making something like this where you putting something together it's not until it's complete that you actually see where you need to make some changes so I think we're done with the hot glue gun you think that's going to go anywhere but I beat down like that and I might just tidy up a few of these ages now with this farm I gotta be careful because it is quite stiff if I've been that it's actually gonna break so by pushing it in I can actually sort of use my fingers to squish and curl some of these edges I don't want it too cold I do love that you know that contemporary sort of um beautiful flowing lines this's looking really really good now we just need a baby you know it's just so incredible to be able to see something that you've visualized for for loo wall now this is something that I've been wanting to make had that picture that I uh took a photo with my iphone off in a magazine on pretty sure I was on an airplane when I found it and to be able to sort of go wow that's actually something I would love to try and make you see it actually come together is pretty amazing