So much today is achieved with a few quick clicks of a button, and is so flat! For this series I wanted to go back to a nostalgic time in all our hearts, of puppetry and created worlds put together with glue. Thinking of the messages each of these children's books hold, I played on that, thinking how adults think of each title.
For 'The Velveteen Rabbit', the first I made in the series, I dove right in with my diorama making skills, using scrapbooking paper, magazine cuts and miniature toys to make these little sets of the boy's room in the story.
For 'Charlotte's Web', I was inspired by the idea of a spider's web spiralling, and how love can be passed on, as it does from Charlotte to Wilbur to Charlotte's offspring. Making a shadow box and using a pig figurine, I hand-stitched silvery white threat across with a little heart motif.
I loved the idea of Parallels in the children's book 'Coraline', how everything has a balancing concept (the real world, the Other world, how Coraline sees her boring life but loves her family unconditionally none the less etc.). So I went with that concept, using both sides of the cover to present the two worlds. I positioned the doll in a black frame, thinking of how the Other Mother sees the heroine as a commodity to collect. On the front we see Coraline in the world as she sees it, but on the back cover we see the grotesque reality of the hand grasping desperately for her...