Well, your baby bump has finally started showing and you’re well on the way to motherhood. Despite the problem associated with pregnancy, every woman wants to treasure these nine months and preserve memories of this condition forever. The most convenient way is to make a photo album and cherish the images. But these are just images. What if you get to preserve your actual belly bump shape in the form of a belly cast?
This is exactly what Wendy Buijs van Burg offers and she’s certainly a master of her craft. This Dutch artist captures your beautiful baby bump and makes a decorative piece out of it, thereby preserving your pregnancy for posterity. She makes this showpiece out of plaster, which is then bejeweled with colored glass and Swarovski crystal.
What inspired Wendy towards body art was her life-changing illness and her own pregnancy. Says she, “My own pregnancy inspired me to make the first mosaic belly cast. I liked the creative process and I also learned, after surviving cancer in 2013, that the body is your most precious possession. That’s why I like to honor it with personal art.” After being so near to death, it was her intrinsic desire to create beautiful things and make people happy.
Although for Wendy, her belly casts are a true labor of love, the work isn’t easy. Each standard mosaic cast takes anything around 30 hours to complete and if it’s a special design, it can take up to 42 hours. Of course, the end product is always most satisfying for her, since it provides a fond memory to her client of how her body looked during her motherhood days.
Wendy’s motivation in creating belly casts is respect for a woman’s body. Says she, “Your body is your temple, so why not honor your body to immortalize it in casting.”
Wens Body Art
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