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indie art & design blog
sweet & peachy
Peachypan designer Fee must barely be able to keep up the pace - so many of her handmade Kanzashi hair accessories have moved to the "Sold" section of her web site since last I looked! (which wasn't that long ago...) The floral pretties pictured here are so beautifully handmade and all are currently for sale at www.peachypan.com. Japanese Snowdrop (my favourite for now!) is pictured above left while Marie Antoinette is featured above right. Below are Coconut Ice (delicious, left) and Forest (right) with its sweet leaf green highlight. Each of these is listed under "Everyday Kanzashi" - most of which are AUD $8.99 each.
Gold Coast designer Fee lived in Japan for a year and it opened her eyes to an amazing culture. She discovered the world of tsumami kanzashi - tsumami referring to the pinching of fabric, and kanzashi meaning hair clip. Kanzashi masters in Japan are responsible for creating the intricate hair pieces worn by geisha and maikos (apprentice geishas). Fee adored this unique art form & learnt how to make kanzashi from buying books in Japanese (quite a challenge when you can't read the language!) and from resources on the web. She finds the process coupled with the end result inspiring, and says that with a lot of patience, persistence and practice, it's extremely rewarding!
Elaborate Kanzashi: Crystal Drop (AUD $75) and Red Berries (AUD $50) from Peachypan
Inspired by "Kawaii" (a Japanese word referring to all things cute) she returned to Australia & in 2007, launched her own label, Peachypan - "Cute things for you and your hair". Specialising in her signature kanzashi, and with necklaces, rings, earrings, badges, tees & stickers joining the lineup, Peachypan is all about fun-loving colours and the sweet, cute simple things in life. Fee can't think of a better way to spend her time & hopes that the label above all offers people a cute fairytale escapism.
Pineapple Pieces and Lucky Star Kanzashi, AUD $8.99 each from Peachypan
As you can see, in addition to the "everyday kanzashi, Fee also creates "elaborate kanzashi" which are truly one-of-a-kind! They are incredibly detailed and range in price from AUD $50 to $75. The kanzashi-making process is quite complex. The first step is dying the silk. (This is perhaps Fee's favourite part - she loves colour & coming away with multicoloured stained fingers!) After the silk is dried, the huge sheets then need to be cut into tiny squares - certainly the most tedious part of the process... After that, each square is folded, origami style, into a petal. This is repeated until you have a flower. The true hair pieces worn by geisha and maikos have hundreds and hundreds of petals and would easily take up to a week to create.
Fee also creates super-cute accessories from found charms that she converts into necklaces or earrings - such as the Wishbone necklace pictured above (AUD $11.99). The sweet face on the neighbouring badge (AUD $1.99) is "Yagi", the playful black goat who also appears on Peachypan t-shirts.
Peachypan is stocked online at www.vintageartfarty.com and Leeloo, and of course, at www.peachypan.com
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