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Waterhouse Waternymph I

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For Halloween this year I was a waternymph based on the painting "Hylas and the Nymphs" by John William Waterhouse. I scanned a portion of the painting from a book I have showing the particular nymph which inspired this costume - which you can seen there in the middle. (I don't know the details on copyright stuff for oooold things....but I hope this is okay because I really wanted to show what inspired me, and of course I didn't paint it!)

I was quite struck when I first saw this painting at how much I look like these nymphs, but thought that I would never actually be able to dress up like them, since they're naked.....not much of a costume there.... But then as I looked at the one in the front shown above I thought it almost looked like that lilly pad on her shoulder was the top of a sleeve on a sheer green dress with another lilly pad cuff and that got me thinking of making a lilly pad dress. Then as I played with draping the sheer green fabric I decided I wanted to stick a little closer to the painting and not do my lilly-pad-puffed sleve idea, and so this idea came to me. I was really happy that the painting (and pond water) was green so I could be a GREEN waternymph instead of a blue one like you always see, since I don't really like blue.

I made lilly pads out of some silky shiney fabric with denim inside to make them stiff, and tacked them together by hand to fit around my shoulders. I also sewed on lengths of silky green cord for the lillypad's stems hanging down in the water. Then I attached a large piece of sheer green fabric to act as the pond water flowing around me. I made some straps to hold it up out of clear stretchy cord commonly used for beading. And I used the same to attach it to my arms in three places with clear and green beads srtung on. The idea was to make it look like the water was dripping off my arms. Underneath I wore a light tan tank top and light tan leggings, although I wish the tans had matched better so you didn't get that slight line where the long tank top ends.
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5416x8091px 15.2 MB
© 2011 - 2024 aelthwyn
Comments17
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Kayanya's avatar
great imagination :)