Baby Saphire Dragon Locket

Hello everyone and welcome!
Today I am willing to show you my newest necklace.
This is a Baby Saphire Dragon and he has only hatched out of his egg a few days ago. He is a little cutie and he loves to spend all of his time sitting in the shadows of the leafs and drinking dew drop water.

I love his cute face expressions and I am feeling content with how small this pendant actually is and how detailed it managed to come out. So far it is the smallest dragon by age and size I have ever created.

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, 

Mandarin Duck Texture Stamps (c)

Hello my sweet honey bunnies! :) 

I am so excited to finally announce that I will be releasing a collection of Mandarin Duck Texture Stamps (c) very soon this summer! I am so worried if you will or will not like them, as I worked for 1.5 years to create these! I will start with releasing a couple of designs to be available for purchase, and as time passes, collection will keep growing. 

The most amazing part is that the journey from the beginning to the completion of the project took me about 1.5 years. Of course I didn't work on them every day, but I did think about them every day!

As you can see from the picture on the right, this is my very first day and the beginning of a very first sketch. Quite a memorable photo as it's almost 1.5 years old. 

When planning and thinking about my textures, I wanted them to be an extension of me. Something that really speaks in my language, something that reflects who I am and what I do in polymer clay world. 

There are so many different stamps and texture stamps available and they all are so lovely. I had a lot of doubts if there is any chance for my textures to succeed in such a busy market. But then I realised that there is no need for me to impress anyone apart from my own self. So when creating these hand drawn designs and then editing these into a professional texture stamp quality artworks, I was thinking about how I am going to use these.

When testing every sample I received from different manufacturers, I was so picky to my own self, that even Ashley said that I am being too harsh with myself!

I replied, that if I will like them, then others will like them too. How can I release something I am not happy with?  So in no way and not at any stage of my project I rushed it to make it just a money-maker. Of course, there is that too, otherwise I would just give them out for free, lol :) But money making was never my first priority. I tried to do my very best to provide the best affordable quality that is available on the market and which I could financially support on my own.

So as you can see these are not just some sort of stock image purchased pictures that I turned into stamp designs. These are my own artworks, drawn by my own hands and they came from my own imagination. 

It was quite a struggle to find a good material and a great manufacturing technology, as some are amazing but super expensive, some were much cheaper but not good enough, not deep enough, not hard-but-flexible enough, weird looking, badly cut or coloured. All sorts really.

 I stopped on these transparent type texture stamps, as they have an amazing qualities in the way how they are made, how long they can last, how you need to care for them, how they are presented, and how functional and easy to work with they actually are.

The fact that you can see an outline of the design on top of your stamp at all times, makes the stamping process so much easier. How many times I wanted to stamp just a little pattern from the stamp on a journal or a jewellery piece, but when I turned it upside down, I was only left with guessing if I will or will not imprint the correct part of the stamp. So transparency was so important for my designs. With the transparent stamp and the design outline on top of it you will never be confused with what you are doing!

Also I was very particular about the edges of these stamps. First of all I didn't want the stamp to just end with a sharp rectangular outline. Whenever I am stamping some smaller textures, it's always a problem to join the edges together if I need to create a larger patterned space. With these uneven outlined edges you can have an endless variation of connections, joining the edges or purposely using the edge parts to make one part of your design plain and the other one with texture. 

The physical quality of the material allows the texture stamps to be hard enough to create deep, sharp-edged texture imprints without smudging and smearing the pattern. Flexability of these texture stamps allow comfortable texturising procedure. Of course as any stamp, these will require some special way of work to ensure a maximum potential. Nothing special, just something I figured out in the process and am willing to share with you soon. 

I will tell some more about these stamps, will be filming tutorials and creating manuals later this summer before the final release. I was just so excited when I received my final samples, that I had to share it with you. I thought, you would love to know what is going on :) 

So...

Stay tuned!
I will reveal more photos, info and teasers soon!

Thank you,