She hoped the pain would be worth it

Hello lovelies! This has been the hardest illustration to date mainly because I was fighting with the shrink plastic. More on that in a bit.

As the companion piece of artwork for my upcoming book Wounds: New Openings Into Old Stories I knew exactly what I wanted to make because the story of Cinderella has always troubled me. I should clarify that when  I say Cinderella I mean the version made famous by French writer Charles Perrault that includes elements such as fairy godmother,  a pumpkin turning into a carriage and the glass slippers.

As someone who refuses to wear uncomfortable shoes I have often pondered on what would actually happen if you wore shoes made of glass. I explore this idea in my short story Shattered Dreams . 

This one uses a fiddly iridescent crimson fabric fof the blood. It doesn't photograph well due to the shine but it is gorgeous.

 You can't tell but the background fabric is this beautiful gold with vine leaves reminiscent of the pumpkin carriage and I have framed it with this textured sage ribbon. 

My original plan had been to have a whole shoe and a broken shoe but the shrink plastic refused to play ball. Every attempt to make a whole shoe caused it to curl up and stick to itself and no amount of reducing the oven temperature and prying it apart with a skewer or flattening it with a spatula made any difference. There was blood, sweat, tears and burned fingers with this one, folks. 

Failed attempts

But it was worth it.