Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crafts. Show all posts

Saturday, March 24, 2012

StitchPunk's Dark Fairytales

Remember my recent post about the use of red against a single color to illustrate and bring out the symbolism in a fairy tale? These beautiful embroidered designs from StitchPunk - Urban Threads, released in August 2011, do the same and with quite a few fairy tales.

I'm not really a crafty and needlework person, though I have been known to work on a tapestry or two, but beautiful and graphic art in any medium is fascinating to me. Embroidery, needlework and stitching of every kind is making a contemporary comeback with some creative and very non-traditional uses of the craft (like embroidery on metal HERE and stitched portraits HERE. You can see a whole lot more unusual stitching via these artist links at Mr. X Stitch HERE.)
Rapunzel
Jack & the Beanstalk
 So much you could infer from the blood red beans Jack threw away!
Snow White
Red Riding Hood
 I find it interesting to see where the red appears. Some, like the two above, are obvious while others, such as the Jack & the Beanstalk one, less so.
Sleeping Beauty
When I see red roses surrounding Sleeping Beauty in this context of a series of fairy tales, it makes me think of roses blooming out of the blood from her pricked finger. Vampire roses... hm. Yet another version of Sleeping Beauty.
Hansel & Gretel
 The red in the candy for Hansel and Gretel is a nice touch. Candy, in this case (as well as others) equals danger!
Cinderella
I like that they used the Aschenputtel version of Cinderella for the text, though they substituted rose blooms for bleeding. (Gives a whole new meaning to the pharse "love lies bleeding..". Even more if you change the punctuation: "Love. Lies. Bleeding.")
The Little Mermaid 
I'm not sure it was intentional, but the shape of the hair looks a lot like a ragged tongue here.
The Ugly Duckling
These designs are available for machine embroidery or as designs for hand embroidery and can be purchased HERE.

They have a few other designs such as a fairy tale castle (see below for design and an example of use), a book of fairy tales and a mushroom house in the same series and style.
I always wanted to do a contemporary Jack and the Beanstalk quilt & stitching wall hanging for my son (his name is Jack) but I quickly realized it would be an expensive and long term trial and error project. Projects like the ones shown here (and the non-traditional embroidery works I've linked to) make me want to dust off that project again.

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Fairy Tale News New Year's Bumper Edition: Fun fairy tale finds

  • ADOPTABOT - The World's first robot orphanage! (Very cute characters created from found objects and looking for new homes... Just like a modern fairy tale, complete with Gepetto-type character, a,k,a, Brian Marshall, who makes unique creations, each with their own distinct personality. Also see more characters at Mr. Marshall's Flickr account HERE.)

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Snow White Told In Dominoes

Snow White by ManelleOliphant
(You can see more of her work by clicking on the image above.
Her illustration for Once Upon A Mattress was featured in this post HERE)

Since we're on a Snow White kick today I thought I'd drag this little gem out of my archives to show you: the story of Snow White (a la Disney) told in dominoes.

This must have taken hours to plan and do. There's a little intro you have to sit through before the dominoes start falling but it's completely worth the wait.


I must admit, I was waiting for a piece of apple to pop out at the end there, or for an ill-timed sneeze! Amazing stuff.