the mummy scissors: a social experiment

A few months back, Roz had a vision: to wrap a scissor like a mummy, as art. The really spooky thing, for me personally, is I happened to have done the same thing a few YEARS back. As art. For no particular reason.

Roz's vision was to ask other bloggers to do their creative version. No strings attached. (Sorry, no pun intended). Just to see how far a DIY idea could spread through the fashion blogging community. She's now in the hospital, and didn't get a chance to get this started, so I thought perhaps if we did it, shot it, posted it, put the link on her top post.. might cheer her up.

Mine took me a few minutes to make. I used a small nail scissor, for a smaller pennant. In my case, I posted it to her, but that's not what she's asking: just to post it on your own blogs. (The Eugene Lim brochure, btw, is for a post coming up). You could then wear it as a necklace, if you want. Or simply unwrap it and use it again as scissors.



In Roz's own words:

"The idea of make-do-and-mend has had a real revival over the last couple of years.. I wanted to combine this rediscovered DIY ethic with an (I think, so far) unique idea - sharing and ‘marketing’ a make-it-yourself, identifiable ‘product’ via the internet...simply for the joy of sharing the idea for and then making - as opposed to selling (or buying) - a styled accessory.

Last year I devised and made a simple pendant design - a pair of blunt sewing scissors (or child’s metal craft scissors) wrapped in strips of silk 'bandages' and hung on a chain. Subsequently, I've had a lot of people commenting whenever I wear this ‘mummified’ necklace. I now realise that I made this pendant shortly after I began my blog, and this gave me the idea to put the two together into a novel blogging project.

I want to experiment with the force of the 'blogosphere' to see how far one idea can reach - namely, the mummy's scissors. But the difference is that this is not a publicising-to-sell campaign, it's a 'make it yourself' concept. My aim is to encourage bloggers (and subsequently their readers) and indeed, anyone interested to make their own pendants.. to style it in a personal way for them.

This is therefore not so much selling a product as 'anti-selling it' - getting everyone to create their own version of an idea - a totally not for profit scheme. Another driving idea behind this item is to create something that is not main-stream, as it is taking the idea of a product but 'giving it away’ for the individual to manufacture.

I’m simply intrigued at this point to see how far this might (or might not) stretch as a concept. I would really love it if you were interested in getting involved, but I understand that you're probably very busy."

I hope you're not (too busy). If you'd rather put your link in my comments, I'll be sure she sees them, and it's also a nice way for us to get to know you and your blog. Bit of self-promotion!

Thank you.

p.s. Shame on me for not linking Maya's post when I first did this post earlier today. She had put hers together before I did, based on a group email I sent out. Please take a look, what she did, and wrote, really touched me.