Snow in Love

It's that time of year again! Let the Downtown Rutland Holiday Window Contest commence!

This window took me three months to plan and prep for, and three days to install. The concept for this window was to make it look like the two figures were sculpted out of snow and deeply in love in a park setting.

To start the installation, I hung black paper on the windows because I had to assemble everything in the window and didn't want people to see the half finished progress as I went. I started the work after we closed the shop on Saturday and finished late Monday night.

For the woman, top down: We bought a white wig and foam head. Her shawl is made out of faux fur. Her arms are a white long sleeve shirt stuffed with tulle to give them substance. Her hands are white gloves, also stuffed and sewn into shape. I made her skirt from white muslin, and she had a tulle petticoat.

For the man, top down: We bought a white wig, foam head, white shirt and a white suit. He is similarly stuffed to give him his structure. His hands are also made from gloves stuffed and sewn into shape. He has a jaunty scarf wrapped around his neck, in part to look nice and in part to keep his neck attached to the rest of his body!

To make them look like they were carved out of snow, I first had to paint them so they were the same color white throughout. I used a watered down white latex house paint. Once they were dry, I used about a metric ton of spray adhesive and two different varieties of Epsom salts for a fine texture and a more coarse one. I'd spray a small section of the piece and throw the salt at them to make it stick. This was a two day process to 1) let things dry and 2) air out the space so as to not set the building on fire. Once the figures were properly textured, they were moved into place and had a few fine details added. The woman had a diamond pin fixed to the center of her shawl and the man had some diamond buttons added to the cuffs of his jacket.

I had previously created the lamp post out of a craft store purchased lantern, modified to become a wired lamp with an Edison style LED bulb. The post was made from a cardboard tube and plastic cone inverted and carefully screwed onto the lantern. The whole thing was then placed on an umbrella stand for stability and strung up to the ceiling for extra support.

The bench went in next, followed by the light curtain and white sheer fabric and the hedge. To make the hedge behind the couple, we bought some plastic boxwood sheets that we stapled to some 2'x6' black paper covered canvases.

Next the blackout paper came down and I put up the lit garland and ribbons. Finally the tulle snow was laid and the window was complete!