Back to the Past

With the two new Medieval gowns done, I just have to wait for the two new ladies to arrive before continuing with any Medieval photos. So I got an idea. I have no idea where it came from, but I know better than to ignore inspiration when it hits. It involves the characters from 'the White Cat' photo story my sister and I did almost 30 years ago.

At the time, we were just beginning to make our OOAK art figures, and weren't offering them for sale yet. We thought it would be fun to shoot a doll version of an old French fairytale, so we set about making the main characters and the cat figures.  

​These were the original Princess Blanchette, and Prince Adrian.....

They stood in my display case for twenty years. But then I got into BJDs, which I thought were infinitely more beautiful. So one day back in 2012 I decided to take apart Blanchette's gown and rework it to fit my JID Isar. I was lucky that thirty years ago I never used glue in costuming. Everything was sewn, often by hand. The only real challenge was that clothes for art dolls were sewn right onto the figure, whereas BJD outfits needed to be removable. But I got it done....

Not long after, I came across a good deal on a Limhwa Mono, and decided to remake the Prince's outfit for him instead.....

Because he was a pale normal resin, I thought he should have an equally pale Princess, so I decided to order a normal JID Kassia to be his Princess, instead of Isar. She arrived at Christmas that year, and I had my new Princess....

The two of them have always had an interesting relationship over the years....from the time she lent her gown to Leona for her wedding renewal, and was free to experience life as a 'modern woman', until she had to go back to her Prince... (story)

Or just in everyday life around the castle....(story)

But the other day, out of the blue I got the idea to revisit their original story......well, not the exact same story, but something new, with a brand new character. I still had an old cat sculpture from my sister, that had never been finished yet, so I took him out and started by making his body, and then started on his outfit....

I took the other cats out of the display case and was happy to see that they were not permanently attached to their bases - just the bottoms of their shoes were glued on - so it was easy to remove them. That meant I could pose them without their unsightly wooden bases being in the way.

​So this morning I set up the interior of Kassia and Adrian's castle, and took some photos of three of the cats there....

I needed something more opulent, something later historically than the castle interior had been used for recently. 

And I wanted the window....

So now I can get started on the story....