Eat Me, Drink Me

When it came to the Alice in Wonderland shoot I had planned 2 different set ups, one revolving around 'Eat Me' which contained toadstools and mushrooms, to be intepreted as the viewer chooses. The other was around 'Drink Me'. A clever couple of phrases that have been used by many since in entertainment and art, Marilyn Manson being one to use it as the name of one of his albums. For the drink section I, and my team, gathered bottles for months and stored them until we needed them. The week beforehand Shawn and I took all the labels off and then, with the help of Kate also, re-labelled them with personalised, hand-written 'Drink Me' stickers and tags.

The prop toadstools were not as easy to come by. Instead of buying some, I decided to do what I do best and make them!

Using chicken wire, pringle pots, tape, lots and LOTS of layers of papier mache, spray paint, acrylic paint and a lot of hours later I had 4 different sized toadstools to place decoratively around Coco! There was no specific format in which I made them, it was about being creative and forming the base shape as best as possible with heavy duty chicken wire and allowing the layers of papier mache to dry thoroughly in between each other. Being the height of winter definetly did not help getting them dry, but we managed! Shawn helped layering the papier mache and spraying the white bases. I then did the rest of the paint job, painting each spot on individually by hand. These were great fun to make and I was really pleased with the way they looked. They are staying as a prop in the studio from now on!