The Fairycake Godmother

‘The Fairy-Cake Godmother’

As usual there is a rather epic tale to this picture, and once again so many emotions and exhausting weekends. For anyone who is looking at this photograph for the first time, they will only see the fun and colours, which is wonderful, and exactly how I intend first impressions to be. But for me this picture means so much more. It represents a lesson I learned about having patience, and being able to admit when things go wrong. Most importantly it stands for friendship, teamwork, and the amazing support of the people I work with.

To start at the beginning, I need to go back to Christmas. If you read my diary regularly, you may remember me mentioning how I had shot a picture in January with a giant prop that took over a week to make. Well, the cake in this picture was that prop, only in a far simpler form. We had created a scene with Katie standing on it in the snow but something just wasn’t right. The day we had dragged the cake to the woods, the snow had begun to melt and my entire focus had been the prop without much consideration for how things would tie together. It was a difficult morning – Katie was absolutely frozen to the core, shaking and steadily going blue, while I had turned up with the wrong lens, and was frantically shouting at Elbie and Matt to pull ‘more interesting’ foliage into the picture. I had even found myself desperately sieving flour over branches like a mad woman to try and make the whole scene look more frosty and magical. It was a disaster.

In the weeks that followed I ignored the pictures, leaving them on my laptop as I tried to avoid my looming sense of defeat. I realised my mistake had been to make everything pure white: the cake, Katie’s hair and make-up – even the clothes. It was intended to look like a pop-up Christmas card brought to life, but instead it was flat, boring and lifeless. The cake had survived surprisingly well, and I found myself wandering into the garage in my dressing gown and slippers staring at it, wondering what I would do if I had the chance to shoot things all over again. Slowly I accepted that the missing element had been colour. I remembered an old packet of birthday candles I had at the back of the kitchen cupboard and dug them out. As I studied their candy-coloured stripes my mind began to fizz and I knew I had to face the facts: we needed to dump the old shoot and start again. Reluctantly I sat down and wrote a long apologetic email to the team. I felt like I had wasted people’s time, and especially Katie’s as she had really suffered for the pictures, but I knew if they trusted me I could make an image much better than before. Elbie replied instantly, saying how she hadn’t felt any magic on that shoot, and that she was happy for us to have a second attempt. Moments later, I got the same words from Katie. I felt relieved, and so grateful for working with a team who are my friends as much they are professionals. So it was agreed – we were back to square one.

As I started planning the new picture concept, colour was the top priority – and lots of it. The first shoot had been incredibly difficult because the cake was extremely heavy to move, so I decided to do something I have never done before and create our set in my back garden. I still wanted everything to be white, which was now impossible as it was April and the snow had long gone. Instead, I dreamt of children’s pop-up books and cardboard forests. I needed to make a landscape out the cheapest materials possible, as the cake had cost so much money to build and decorate. My only option was to salvage as much card as I could possibly find. During the week at my day job as a fashion designer, I remembered seeing piles and piles of long cardboard tubes in the garment cutting room linked to our design studio. I went to investigate and sure enough they were still there. As you can imagine, trying to explain to people how I needed their left over tubes ‘to make a cardboard forest in my back garden’ is rather embarrassing, but in the end it was fine as, by now, most people who know me aren’t surprised by my behaviour!

It was agreed that I could take as many as I wanted, which meant the long and slow process of bagging up my body weight in tubes every night after work and staggering home on the bus, train, and the Tube bent double – literally carrying them tied to my back. It took two full weeks to bring enough back from London. I decided to turn my tubes into giant matchstick trees; the type children draw next to their little square houses. As the weeks passed the costume was ready, the tubes were painted, and I had booked a date for the shoot. I pulled together tear sheets for the hair and make-up and as always my ideas were getting bigger and bigger.

The pressure was higher than normal, as I planned on throwing paint over the model and the cake, so everything would be ruined after we had taken the picture. I only had one chance to get this right. I knew my ‘forest’ needed to provide a solid white backdrop to the cake, and it became increasingly obvious that my stick trees would not provide the cover I needed. As I sat up one night trawling eBay for inspiration, I suddenly thought of snow camouflage. To my sheer delight I stumbled across a type of white lightweight plastic camouflage for hunting in the snow that was cheap and looked like children’s paper cut outs – it was perfect! I bought five bundles, and then found some giant polystyrene snowflakes for added magic. At last I had a plan, I knew that this was possibly the most difficult shoot I had ever done as there was so much to make, and so I finally accepted the help of two really lovely young photographers, Charlotte and Adam, who threw themself into the work and were worth their weight in gold.

On the weekend of the shoot we started at dawn on the Saturday and worked through non-stop until one the next morning. It was raining, I was terrified everything would be ruined and my house was utter chaos. There were six of us in total, painting, gluing, sawing and nailing everything together – even Katie the model was painting her own props! It was absolutely exhausting, I remember standing by the sink at midnight after spending over three hours mixing jars of candy- coloured paint to throw at the cake, seriously doubting myself and our ability to pull the scene together. I was convinced that I had pushed all of us too far, but as always we just carried on until it was time to give up for the night. One of my favourite memories was when we finished the giant cake candles. It was one of those moments when everyone is slightly delirious and all sense goes out the window. It was after midnight and we had just stuck the last paper wick in the candle heads. We stood back with glazed eyes admiring what we’d made. Out of nowhere, we all found ourselves instinctively swaying on the spot singing ‘Happy Birthday’ in a slow drawn-out drawl and then bursting out laughing. It was definitely time for bed!

The next morning we got up early and started building the set. By two in the afternoon everything was in position and we were almost ready to go. I took my sprays and pots of paint and spent about half an hour covering the cake in pure delicious colour. It was a big responsibility, but it strangely came to me so naturally, so quickly. It was fine and to my surprise looked quite amazing by the time I was done.

At last I felt in control. Katie came out in her corset and dress and I spray painted her on the spot. We finally managed to squeeze her onto the set and into position. And then, there it was: ‘the magic’ – the thing that had been so painfully missing from the original shoot. I stood back and tried to take in what we had created. It was weeks of work, one failed shoot, and a whole lot of carrying, sawing and painting cardboard, laughs and utter exhaustion rolled into one … And it was beautiful.

The forecast had been for rain, when out of nowhere the sun melted through the clouds and kissed our little paper forest as it fluttered in the breeze. The light fell across Katie’s face, dappled though the paper cuts, and created delicate sparkles against the white sheets we had pinned to the trees. I took the pictures, wearing the oldest messiest clothes I owned. I hadn’t brushed my hair for two days, and was still wearing my paint-stained slippers, but I didn’t give a damn. This was my dream, exactly how I had hoped it would be and it was finally worth every exhausting second.