I made this Alphonse Mucha Inspired summer wreath for a turn-of-the-century-art poster event earlier this summer. And who defines that genre more than the fin de siècle Czech artist Alphonse Mucha?
Mucha draws a very distinctive character – his fin de siècle ladies have full heads of voluminous hair, they wear headbands, low on the forehead, in the best art nouveau style, and the headbands support heavy loads of flowers and foliage on each side of the head, framing the face and making the horizontal volume appear even more extreme.
I hit up our local Michael’s for an armful of artificial flowers, spools of flimsy gold “jewelry wire,”(quote marks necessary. The wire is…. yeesh. Wet fettucini would about cover it.) floral tape, and a North-American voltage glue gun.
The crown itself is made with wire and lashings of the floral tape. It’s structural integrity is basically negative.
For the foliage, I de-stemmed my artificial flowers and pushed them down tight against each other on a sheet of millinery buckram, gluing each bloom with hot glue, and stuffing plastic greenery into any gaps. The flowers needed to be pressed very close indeed – the bouquets would be attached to the wreath base along a curve, and any gap between them would show as patches of gaping white buckram.
I made two bouquets – they’re visually balanced, but not symmetrical.
The flower bundles are held onto the very flimsy wire with strips of linen tape laid across the metal band and hot-glued to the buckram on each side.
I made one more bouquet to place at the center of my bodice –
– and then I took my Alphonse Mucha inspired summer wreath for a little spin.
I think it’s fantastic, and just exactly as “Mucha-ish” as I’d hoped. For a quick afternoon hour hot-glue job, this is shaping up to be one of my current favorite costume pieces.
There’s probably an important life lesson in there somewhere.
In the end, I wasn’t able to make it to the event, so anyone in the Vancouver area who’s looking for an excuse to float through the winter rains like a fin de siècle fin-de-Summer Goddess – I’ve got a wreath and a lofty expression and I’m ready to go!
