Red & Black Dragons. Cake Topper.

As the winter is starting to die down, many people are already starting to plan ahead their holidays, birthdays and weddings. It is a nice feeling! Closer the spring is coming, more revived I am starting to feel, too. It's like we are almost through the darkest night and the first rays of sunset are about to show over the horizon, making the colours of the sky brighter, lighter and warmer.

This time I would like to indulge your curiosity about the new things I made with some photographs of my newest work, the Red & Black dragons cake topper. 

This cake topper took some time and practice to make, as I am not a figurine making professional. By saying this, I still did the job well, but all I wanted to say, that I do not specialise on 3D figurines like that, so it was challenging to make a carcass, wire, foil and all that. 

My customer wanted to have black and red dragons as these are their wedding colours, she said. 

Of course red and black would have gone greatly with gold and shimmery crystals, so I decided to make it exactly like this. In the beginning I was planning to make clay wings, but when I tried on the metallic gold plated ones, I really loved the effect. I know they are not big enough for the dragons to fly, but when making an artistic figurine like this, all that matters is that it looks good and lovely. They are here for loving and hugging anyways, not for flying. So tiny little wings add more cuteness and softness to their silhouettes. 

When working on this project, I made the dragons first and then the round base. It was quite a challenge to understand how I wanted them to be positioned as the base was sticky and every time I placed the dragon on it I was scared it will stick to it. Therefor I covered the base with cling film and then I was playing with the dragons until I was satisfied with the placing. Miraculously their tails entwined together as if they were forming a top of the heart and so it was only obvious that their hands need to be joined together at the very bottom, to form the bottom of the hart, the sharp peak of it. So this came as a complete surprise for me. I felt like some miraculous powerful and loving force was guiding me. 

After the main composition was established, I have placed the dragons on the base permanently and started working on the textures of their skin first. It took me a few hours to cover the whole of their bodies with the scales, but with the help of DOTIES it was so much easier. Dotties saved my life million times when it comes to dragon skin.

After that I used an extruder to make the multiple amounts of swirls that formed a wonderful armour like back decor. For the legs I used extruded and hand rolled fine and thin swirls. Was quite a challenge too. But it wouldn't be interesting otherwise, right?  My client also wanted to have some orange colours on the red part,  but I didn't feel like adding orange clay or painting some parts over. Therefore I decided to add subtle effect of "orangey-ness" :) by adding orange or fiery crystals and gold. Gold is yellow and it will automatically soften and make the red colour warmer to appear as more orangey. 

As you can see I have also used the ultimate Mandarin Duck Stamp (Organic) as it is perfect for larger scales of dragon skin or pebble looking background. I can't tell you how many times I have used this stamp! This one is definitely a keeper for me, for you and for the next upcoming collection. 

Anyways... The sweetest part of this journal I think are the two little hands that the dragons are lovingly holding together. It was important for me to show the tender and sweet connection between these two dragons, just like the real personalities behind these characters, they are deeply in love with each other. 

You can see more photos on my Flickr Page. 

Thank you very much for reading, 

Love & Peace, 

"Elements Entwined" Journal

Hello everyone and welcome!

Let me present you my my "Elements Entwined" journal which I particularly enjoyed making as I had discovered some new techniques while making it. 

Again, during Christmas period I do receive quite a lot of Christmas orders and so this was is not an exception. I was quite pleased that I have received quite a few local UK based orders. It's good to be appreciated by people from your own continent as usually it's American people and people from Australia that did order a lot before from me. So I am glad that UK customers did join them this year. 

So the mission for this project was to create some fire and water Yin Yang inspired artwork. That was all I knew. Luckily my customer didn't order it to be a Yin Yang shape in particular and so I had some space for inspiration. 

I have used couple of  stock images from google as my main inspiration and while there is nothing special in these pictures, they really helped me to understand what exactly I wanted to show on the journal. I wanted the water and the fire to be more than just that. I wanted them to look decorative. 

So  everything started with black clay base and white clay for the elements. I knew that this project will require quite a strong and powerful colour effect and I wasn't sure I will be able to achieve it by using colourful clay. I admit I am not as strong in using all sorts of polymer clay effects and I prefer to use clay for sculpting and then paint it over. I have noticed that my style right now is undergoing some changes where I am discovering some new techniques, tools, materials, ways of painting with inks and acrylics and even liquid polymer clay.  So there it was, just a black and white object, but I did make sure that I made all the necessary volumes and textures on it before colouring. 

The first step for me is always sort of a trial. I use inks and I do use lighter, sort of more transparent colours, just to set the colours in, to understand how the design will look and so on. When I like what I made, then I add up some more shadows, deeper and brighter colours and then I bake my artwork. 

As you can see, I am using a transparent film as a palette for my inks. this way I can clearly see the colour and the inks don't get absorbed into paper. You can also use a white plate I guess but make sure you won't eat from it again. 

So for this composition I used Piñata Inks in red and yellow (can't remember if I mixed orange or used Piñata orange as well).. And for the blues I used blue ink from Piñata and a little bit of Adirondack ink in Mermaid colour. I was quite pleased with the result and I knew I will be enchanting these colours later after the first bake. 

For the water - wave effect I have used this photo to get inspired from colours and to see how to create the foam.  Waves do fascinate me a lot and by looking at them you can see so much detail, lovely constellations of foam, strands of foam, perfect turquoise teal ocean wave colour burst and lovely little shimmery droplets on the very tops of the waves. PERFECTION!Love waves! 

After the baking was done I added up extra tones, made sure that the colors are strong, vivid and consistent ( I used Reeves, Liquitex acrylic 

paints for that). The little ribbons and swirls of fire got covered with 18K Gold Leaf  pen from Krylon. I love this pen. It's quite pricey but it's perfect as it uses real gold powder and it shines so much more than gold acrylic paint I have. 

For the silver-white wave foam I have used same marker but in Silver tone. I have also added up some crushed pearls on the bumpy parts of the water foam. And the actual foam was made from Pardo Translucent clay. First I made it from a lot of coral look-a-like clay pieces and then I texturised it with a very fine ball tool to create more bubbles. 

After all the colours were set, I decided to experiment and I used liquid clay (brushed it over the fire and water areas). Baked again, of course. It gave it this interesting depth and some nice satin shine. I have also implemented some crushed crystals into it while the clay was still liquid and baked it all together. Unfortunately crushed crystals ended up being very sharp and so I had to rip some of them off and cover the others with more varnish and liquid clay as safety comes first! I didn't want my client to cut his fingers! 

And so by the end of this project I came up with this journal which I was quite pleased with as I haven't yet done anything from clay that represented realistically looking fire and water and even if fire does only look real in the photos or real life, I knew that my fire will be fore of a decorative one and I was happy with the result.  ENJOY!

Thank you so much for reading till the end, 

Namaste ॐ