Hello Gang!
Last fall, the team I worked with to produce our epic book, “Becoming a Belly Dancer: From Student to Stage,” hosted a super-successful Kickstarter campaign to help us take the project from the document stage to the finished product. We were thrilled with the outpouring of support from our community of friends, students, and fans. Our team put together a selection of treats for various different levels from book bundles, to assiut hair ornaments, book bags to custom costumes.
Two Assiut Belly Dance Bras
Our “Top Tier” premium included a custom designed, made-to-measure assiut bra. I had a gorgeous scrap of assiut that would make four spectacular belly dance bras. When our month-long campaign closed, we had two dancers sponsor us at the top tier!
Poppy Maya Designed a Glam Assiut Bra
Poppy Maya, our cover girl, is a professional costume maker, so we decided to each do one of the bras. As it turned out, we had one “Glam” style bra and one “ATS-Tribal” style bra. I have a huge stash of tribal jewelry parts and pieces, so I took on the design and construction of the tribal style bra. Poppy made this gorgeous geometric assiut bra for our very happy dancer. Look at how lovely that modern assiut bra looks paired with faux assiut leggings designed by Melodia.
Tribal Assiut Bra
My tribal dancer, Inara from Oxnard, California sent me a simple design brief. She wanted beautiful assiut bra, with metal and coin embellishments. Fantastic! That’s exactly the kind of bra that I LOVE to make! After a quick inventory of my assiut pieces, I did a couple of rough sketches. Here is a quick snapshot of my rough drawing. I choose to add a lot of coins via a pair of removable coin and chain drapes so she would have loads of flexibility in her look.
To maximize the metal of the assiut, and without covering it with loads of coins, I decided to divide each cup with a verticle row of shield-shaped metal embellishments. While I know she loves the coins, I really wanted the jewelry components to frame the assiut.
It took us a few months to arrange a photo shoot with my favorite photographer, Alisha Westerfeld, but when we finally were all together in the same room, the results are lovely. Above, you can see the details of the assiut. Below, we went for a totally different dark fusion look.
I’m very grateful for these two ladies who helped us take our dreams to the next level by supporting our Kickstarter campaign. I’m so proud and happy of these two designs!
Happy Costuming and Delicious
Dawn Devine ~ Davina
July 21, 2017
