Dancing Hippo Momma Journal

This cute journal was made for a client who really loves her mother. Her mother is in love with all things related to hippos and likes to write in her sketchbooks, so as a loving daughter, her child decided to surprise her mother for Christmas! Oh how do I love clients like that! Caring, loving, attentive to their loved ones and full of fun and inspiration!

So she wanted the journal to show a dancing hippo and we both stopped at one picture drawn by Disney Team and when she saw it she didn't want to have anything else but this hippo. 

I did make sure to make a hand drawn sketch and a creative collage before we start. 

The main things required to be present on the cover was a hippo, a lot of cake and a tutu. And the hippo had to hold a cake in her hand! Fun, right?

So I arranged a whole tea set with a lot of sweets, fudge and cake flying around in a magical dance with a hippo. Everything is dancing, even her curtains and her fruit bowl. 

It was quite a lovely project and fun to play with.

Thank you so much for taking time to read this, 

Love, 

Christmas 25% Discount

Hello everyone!

I would like to joyfully announce that for the next couple of weeks up until the end of this year there will be a 25% discount available in my ETSY SHOP on tools and tutorials. This is my Christmas present to each and every of you this festive season! xxx

Thank you for being my follower!

Creature in the Fox Mask - Necklace

This necklace appeared out of nowhere and I was actually working on some other project but midway I stopped doing what I was doing and took black clay and started to sculpt. I have created the head in quite a short time, but then when I put in on a chain I begun to wonder that it doesn't look complete. 

I tried few options and ordered few different elements, but non of them really fit. I think this necklace was hanging on my necklace stash hook for about a couple of months, before this small black tassel came along with a little black Czech glass bead  in the shape of a drop. 

This necklace also reminds me a little bit of a door know, the ones you have on the door to knock at. 

 

At the moment I am also trying to break the boundaries in the ways how I want to make my jewelry pieces. I want to dedicate more time and make my pieces even more detailed, make the lines finer, swirls thinner and the whole thing more ornamented. I hope with time you will notice this in my future pieces. 

Thank you so much, 

"Radharani's Dreams" Necklace

Hello everyone!

I would like to show you my newest necklace "Radharani's Dreams".

This necklace was inspired by my deep interest in Hinduism and India in general.
This piece is very special and it's main element is Krishna's Face. Krishna is the God of all Gods according to Vedas (Ancient Indian Manuscripts) and same as Jesus, Krishna was once walking and breathing on this Planet. He also had a lover, the most beautiful girl Radharani. She was so madly devoted to Krishna, that all she could ever think of was Krishna. Therefore I decided to call this necklace "Radharani's dreams", as when we are remembering out loved one, we usually see his or her face in the most beautiful light and atmosphere and our feelings have all the colors of the rainbow. 

Golden elements on the chain and the necklace look like beautiful golden peacocks, one of Krishna's main symbols. Shimmery and magical light blue swarovski crystal in a drop shape represents the tear drop of love, anticipation, blues, longing and missing a person you love. 

So this is how Radharani passes her lonely days when Krishna is far away from her. She dreams of him eternally and always and her feeling overflow her soul so much that she can't hold the tears.

Size: 6x9cm ( 2.5 x 3.5 inch) approx

Swarovski crystals, 16K gold plated elements

18K Gold leaf pen outlines

Polymer, Alcohol Ink
Writing on the back in Sanscrit: Hare Krishna

Thank you very much for reading, 

25% Off all items!

This is one short thing I want to say before I leave London for 2 weeks and go to Riga !

SHOP HERE NOW! 

                                  SHOP HERE NOW! 

Kitsune Fox Journal

Hi everyone!

Let me show you a lovely and quite unusual project I worked on recently.  This was a project for a lovely customer from Japan and my first ever custom order from there. I got overexcited when I found out where my client is from as Japan is a dream place to go and I am finding the traditional Japan to be one of the most fascinating things on Earth.
But my client was quite a cool guy and he sent me this journal cover with a spiral binding inside, so that he can swap and change his papers inside it whenever he needs to. He said he wanted to keep this journal for life. Now, I do really cherish and appreciate such will. It amazes me every time when people choose to trust such an important job to me. Thank you so much!

And so the idea of the journal came directly from my lovely client as he was very specific about the idea. He had all the drawings and elements ready for me and I only needed to combine them in the right composition and add up my own Mandarin twist!

Foxes in Japanese Mythology are classed a type of Gods or good spirits and they are worshipable. It is a great luck to have a fox in your garden. The coolest and the most Japanese thing about these foxes is that they are supposed to have 9 tails and breathe fire. Now this is my thing! FANTASY CREATURES! Oh yeah! :) Younger the fox, less tails it has. Older and more experienced in magical skills the fox is, more golden and multi-tailed it gets. At least that's how I understood the concept.

I especially loved the little graphic clouds. They so remind me of anime style, but it seems like it's also quite traditional for Japanese art to show clouds this way.
On the back of the journal is my client's family crest - a very stylised Wisteria wreath. I do like it a lot as it sums up the whole thing with a deep family and dynasty meaning. So even if this journal seems to be quite cute and innocent, it possess a lot of knowledge, tradition and respect for elders, spirit animals and nature. Thank you so much for such honour to my client!

Thank you for reading, 

Enjoy your life, 

The Spirit of the Forest

Hello everyone!
It seems like I am writing these posts one by one today, but you know me. I wether work like crazy or leave stuff behind and then have to start picking it all up :) Now is this exact time.

 This project has been a very special one for me as it was my first ever Kindle cover and then I realised I can do kindle covers too! Yay :)
I wanted it to look like brown leather as my client did send me the actual brown leather kindle cover. So it needed to match. Therefore I used Living Doll by Sculpey ( which is a dyeing dinosaur now and is not produced anymore...) and decided to create an wonderful, center orientated composition of a bird that is protecting the forest leaves with it's wings and is surrounded by all sorts of magical orbs, swirls and other elements. The main focus point is an absolutely gorgeous aqua-green labradorite crystal that has these amazing vertical lines that so reminded me of the pine forest. And so it goes that this wonderful highly decorated bird is keeping the image of the forest very close to it's heart.

I wanted to ornate the bird's chest with some wonderful swirls, aventurine crystals, little golden dots and curvy outlines. And I also wanted the face of the bird to be very innocent and cute, therefore I used a simplicity trick here.



To find a labradorite like this in supply stores is very hard ( at least I am finding it very hard) and so I kept this stone for a very special occasion.



Thanks a lot for checking in :) You can find 10 more photos of this Kindle cover in this JOURNAL GALLERY. Enjoy!

Love you, 

The Horse with a Fire Mane Journal

Hello everyone and thank you for stopping here today! :)

Today I will be happy to talk about my new journal "The Horse with a Fire Mane".
It is an A6 journal and it was ordered by a loving mother for her child. Her daughter loves riding horses and even owns a personal Pony and so the daughter says: "When we jump together, I feel like we are flying!". This inspired me to create a pegasus with a fire mane as and I made it quite stocky as a pony would be.

I wanted to experiment with incrustation technique and I used crushed freshwater pearls for that. And as I am not into clay swirls of any kind, I also added some little swirls to decorate the wing and the chest. I used fine gold paint to make it really sparkle with golden shades.
For the background I used Mandarin Duck Texture stamps (Blossom and Organic Mesh Inverted).

I especially like how the mane turned up. It is playful, airy, bouncy and looks natural to me as if wind is blowing at it. I also decided to add little golden decorative ropes to enhance the liveliness of the mane even more.  

The wing has a combination of purples, golds and pearls for that special royal style.

I hope you like it and you can see more of it in my  Gallery section or my Flickr Gallery.

Thank you so much for reading, 

Little Black Sheep

Hello everyone!

Today I would like to show you a little and very cute figurine I made a couple of weeks ago. This little sheep figurine was fully made from polymer clay and has some foil inside it to make it lighter and to ensure that baking process is safer and nothing cracks.
I used the swirl technique to imitate the sheep's swirly fur patterns and decorated it all with swarovski crystals to make it look rich and magical. I really loved making the swirls and when I covered the whole back and sides, it started looking like a cape with a hood. It looked way too cute to spoil it and so I decided not to cover the whole sheep's body with swirls.
Enjoy the photos guys :)

 

Thanks a lot for popping in!

Love, 

New Life for the Pendant

One day my friend had contacted me with an request to help her fix one of her pendants. It was a Swarovski Crystalacite Pendant which was given to her by her partner and was cherished a lot. It happened to fall down on the floor and some parts of it got chipped off. She asked if I can wrap it up in any possible way to make it look whole again.
So here is how the crystal looked before. Not as green as this photo, but does change colour according to the light anyway.
























My task wasn't easy as I needed to make sure I am not covering the whole thing. Crystal still has to be seen, but as it was shattered in many different places, there were only some parts I could leave open. Gladly it wasn't cracked all over, just some little and bigger pieces fell off. If it would be broken into halves for example, I wouldn't risk fixing it as crystals of such condition do not possess any powers anyway apart from memorabilia.
So this was the first option and my friend absolutely loved the shape and the whole idea apart from the brown colour as it's just not the colour she wears. She prefers silvers and blacks.

 

So without thinking too much, I decided to darken it and then to apply some silver effect on it. She was very pleased to see this transformation and not she can proudly wear her partner's present again.

Thank you so much for reading, 

Have a lovely day!

The Nectar Dragon Journal A5

Hello everyone!

For the last week I was working on this newest journal "The Nectar Dragon". This journal was a custom order for my client's daughter. She loves everything dragon related and UK related. So finding an artist in London to make a gift for her daughter was a real treat and very exciting for my client and I am sure will be greatly appreciated by her daughter. 

My client wanted to have a tree, a dragon and sunset on the journal cover, but she wanted the dragon to be quite detailed, so we came up with the idea of having tree branches instead of the full tree. The main object is obviously a baby dragon who is drinking the nectar from beautiful flowers. He doesn't have wings yet as he is still a baby. Those will grow later.

I wanted to create a sunset on the background, but I wasn't sure how to do it, and so I decided to give the background a subtle feel of purple-pink colour change, as if the sun is about to rise or about to set.  The small leaf theatres on the background are to imitate the idea of some foliage in the depth of this composition. 

I always struggle to create full on 3D pictures, but I think this time it doesn't look very flat. Sometimes it is more important to remain on the safe side when you can't allow yourself to make mistakes because of time  or material limitations. Otherwise you should go and practice, experiment and succeed or fail. All these things are parts of one big activity called "learning curve". 

And so here is the journal!

Mandarin Duck Texture Stamps are out!

Hello everyone!
It's been quite a few busy and crazy weeks and a lot of things were going wrong, but finally we made it and the Mandarin Duck Texture Stamps are now finally released. They are already available for sale in my Etsy shop and some of you wonderful people have already purchased the whole sets. I am ever so grateful for this!
I updated my website with a Products section which has a full instructions on using the stamps. Just in case if you need to know.
Otherwise, here are the stamps, enjoy them, buy them, like or share. Do whatever you please as they were made for you! Also here is the Grand Reveal video if you haven't seen it yet :) Click on it! -->

And here are the stamps!

"GENTLE BLOSSOM" (Positive & Negative imprints)

Simply Dotting Tools

Hello my sweet honey bunnies!

Today I would like to announce some exciting news!

Whole summer I was working on few great projects and ideas apart from making journals and jewellery. It's been hectic and hard, but the result is just fascinating :)

Let me present you my newly designed, Mandarin Duck branded "SIMPLY DOTTING TOOLS".

That's all they really are, just some good old Dotting Tools / Ball tools, although I am very happy to have some tools of my own exclusive colour and even branded with MANDARIN DUCK name! 

Whoah! :)

So this is a little moment of glory for me.... And a lot of tension at the same time. I don't know if you will find them useful, if you will love the colour, if you will appreciate the fact that they are designed and marked with my name. But I will be very pleased if you will xxx.

Thank you so much for checking these out and please don't hesitate to write comments about what you think of these tools :) Critics and suggestions are welcome :) And purchases are welcome, too :)

Love xxx,