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.

Dark Fantasy Jewelry Collection. 2nd Edition.

Hello everyone and thank you for stoping by!

Today I would love to present you with some progress of my ongoing creation of the Dark Fantasy collection. It is a second edition so far. I love making these things!! :) I love working with black clay, labradorite stones and metallic elements.
So far I have made 3 pieces, but I am planning on making more. It's too hard to resist working with these. So therapeutical. Every time I feel tired and can't seem to be at ease, that means that another necklace is coming. It may sound weird, that on the verge of exhaustion I always end up making something interesting. And it's not like these pieces are full of negative or ill energies. God no! I dedicate all my positive energies into making these pieces or any other pieces, it's just I always feel that I need to come to some sort of a breaking point to make something. I can be walking around a journal I need to make for 2 weeks and then randomly make a collection of necklaces in between as if I am overstuffed with inspiration.. even if the actual journal is just NOT COMING OUT!! :)
I guess I am just weird and I guess for every artist the creative energies come and go to their minds, hearts and hands in all sorts of ways. Some need alcohol, some need a cool movie, some needs an adventure, someone is like Walter Mitty and all his/her adventures are happening in their heads only.
I have so much going on in my head constantly, sometimes I feel like the head is about to explode, but it seems to me that the "Creative Birth Giving" process is a hard thing to master. Or maybe I am just driving myself to the bone and asking too much from myself. Who knows, even I myself hesitate to answer this question.
So! 3 items so far! Please enjoy! All are still available in my store: https://goo.gl/xAOw7D

Thank you very much for reading this post, 

Love and Peace!

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, 

The Eye of Horus by Mandarin Duck

Hello my sweet honey bunnies! :) 

Today I would like to show an unusual necklace made in Egyptian style. I was requested to make a necklace according to a book one of my clients wrote. The main element in it was a sacred amulet called "The Eye of Horus" and so the lady wanted to have one herself. 

As you all know, making something fragile from polymer sometimes is not an easy trick to perform and so we agreed that we will have to put the eye on some sort of a stable base. The result ended up being a mixture between ancient Egyptian style and a style of my own, my techniques, my textures and so on. I am glad that the client was pleased with the result and I hope you will enjoy seeing my interpritation of Egypt pulled through the corridors of my own imagination.

Thank you for reading this!

"The Garuda Necklace"

Hello my sweet honey bunnies and all the other followers!

I am very thrilled to finally show my latest necklace - "The Garuda Necklace".

In the past year I got very interested in ancient Vedas and I learnt quite a lot about the mythical creatures from there.

As it is stated in the ancient Vedas, Lord Krishna's private transport is a large bird-a-like mythical creature named Garuda. This is one of the most important creatures in the universe and he looks like half man and half bird. In my version I didn't wanted a human being's body parts to be involved so I ended up making a very royal looking, highly decorated bird and named him Garuda.

He is the source of inspiration and attraction for all the birds and he gives them the powers to fly. He is the one who makes the gravity non existant for the birds. He is the one who serves Lord Krishna and carries him around everywhere and can travel through the universe in split seconds. This is how powerful he is.

But enough talking and telling stories. You might not be even interested in those. Although you will surely appreciate the effort, the precision and the uniqueness of this piece.

Enjoy!

Necklace Sizes in a cool way!

Hello guys!
I was educating myself about the lengths of necklaces so that when working on my newest collection, I could determine what sizes of chains to do for which jewellery. I ended up stumbling upon this cool picture. Explains everything and looks cool! Perhaps click on it to zoom in and save it on your desktops or even print it out! HANDY :)

Click to enlarge!

The Water Princess Necklace

Hello my sweet honey bunnies and welcome to my blog on this lovely sunny Monday day!

Today I would like to finally release some pictures of my ""Water Princess" necklace. I know you were all waiting for it for the whole week. 

This is a preview of original necklace that my client saw.

This necklace was designed as a custom order and it was inspired by one of my previous necklaces I made. My client saw it in my collections and asked if I could adjust the colours to silvers and blues instead of browns and greens. This necklace was supposed to be a present for her mother on Christmas. She showed me her picture and I realised straight away, that the actual metallic base I was supposed to use wasn't good enough either, as the original design has quite defined rectangular shapes and would look a bit too geometrical when combined with smooth and feminine curves of her mother. I went to the shop and found a perfect base for the necklace. Usually I love going to the shops and buy good quality but not very expensive jewellery pieces made from metal. Then I work on top of it by adding polymer clay in any ways I want. This way the whole piece looks much more expensive, definitely is much more functional and there is less options for bits and bobs breaking off it. 

I know that I am not too patient with clay and even if I can spend hours texturising it, still I can't be bothered polishing it for 5-6 hours :) It's just not me! So I think that a lovely friendly good quality metallic base is a perfect addition to my artworks. 

So let me start by showing you the beginnings, the work in progress pictures.

Click to enlarge this picture

It was quite easy to make this necklace technologically, but as you might already know it was quite time consuming with the textures. I really take my time with texturising every mil millimiter of clay when I work. Needless to say, I made it from black Premo clay by Polyform and after baking I painted it with a silver acrylic paint by using the dry brushing technique. And so here are the final results. More in my Flickr gallery. 

To learn more about all the different effects you can make by using a ball tool only, watch this tutorial and don't forget to subscribe:

Thank you so much for reading, 

Have a creative day, 

"Dragon Whistle Man's" Story

Couple of months ago I saw a post on Facebook written by my very dear friend from Latvia. She was telling her friends a story of her daughter’s obsession with dragons.

Apparently the little girl was given a dragon book as a gift for last Christmas and since then she became completely obsessed with dragons. This book contained a specific dragon alphabet as well as the address of a place based in London, where as the book says, they are making dragon whistles that can summon a real dragon. The girl was confident enough to learn the whole alphabet and to write a letter to London, but wasn’t old enough to send it via post and the mentioned address didn’t even exist in real life, so her mother said that she will see what she can do.

I contacted her after seeing this post and we came up with a plan. She really wanted to keep her daughter’s dream for longer but she also didn’t wanted to tell stupid stories to her daughter which would later on end up being a lie. 

After my suggestion she told to her daughter:

“Maybe aunty Mandarinka knows how to get this letter to the right addressee. Maybe the Dragon Whistle Man just changed an address.”

And so they sent the letter to me to find out where the "Whistle Man" lives…

So I received a letter and had to translate every letter from dragon language to Russian letters to find out that in this letter she expresses her sincere will to obtain one of these whistles, but as she doesn’t have any  money she offered her favourite toy for exchange for the whistle…

So I couldn’t resist and I made a whistle for her and I wrote her a letter that says:

Dear Aljona,

I was very pleased to receive your letter as almost no one these days writes to our little whistle shop and we only check the post there once a month. I am very pleased to tell you that we still have some whistles left and each of them is attached to a particular dragon. We are not selling them any more and are just keeping them to ourselves. But I was so pleased to see your interest that I decided to just give it to you for free.You can keep your favourite toy. Usually I would never give to anyone one of our precious whistles, but just because you are so young and I am very proud that you are interested in dragons, I will make one just for you.

I must tell you something you should know. Dragons existed on our planet long ago together with Dinosaurs and long after them , but because many people started to hunt them for their skin and teeth, dragons started to die very fast. The remaining dragons decided to migrate deep in the mountains of our Planet Earth. Some other legends and people are saying that dragons became invisible and are now living amongst us but in parallel dimensions, like kind spirits. Dragon’s stopped trusting people and so we can’t see them anymore.

Although we are still keeping our whistling tradition and every first Sunday of each month we are going to a particular place and we are whistling in hope that once the dragons will forgive humans and come back to us. For many hundreds years our grand grand fathers were doing this, but we didn’t see anything. Some whistle obtainers sometimes report finding a tooth or a dragon scale, but they like to keep it to themselves, so we don’t have any examples to prove that.

So before you have your whistle, you need to know how to use it.

It’s not a regular whistle even if it may look like one. Sometimes you will notice that it doesn’t sound at all, but if you blow hard enough it can make a loud sound.

The idea is not to make a lot of noise with it. The idea of “dragon whistling” is that you blow into the whistle very slightly and think about the dragon, imagine it. Dragons that live in parallel dimensions can’t hear the whistle anyway, but they can clearly feel your thought about it and a vibration of your breath, as if you would be there next to him. So thoughts are your best friends to connect with dragons. You don’t see them, but they may choose to see you and everything you are doing if they will become close to you.

Try not to whistle too often. As legends say, dragon’s don’t like a lot of noise, so whistling once a month, like we are doing it, on the first Sunday of each month would be just enough to let the dragon know that you love him , that you remember about him and that you would love to see him. All the rest will be up to the dragon. He may never come. But as they say, if you haven’t seen something, it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. So keep trying and keep believing.

Unfortunately as a whistle maker I can’t promise you more than that. I myself never saw a dragon, but I am a person from the family of ‘dragon whistle” makers, so I keep my family tradition and make whistles whenever someone requests one.

My grandfather once brought this beautiful turquoise piece of skin that looks just like a dragon skin. I can't be sure that it is, but I cut a little piece of it to share with you. I am sure you will like it.

I am wishing you good luck.

Reggards,

Ernest Mortor Drake

I hope you enjoyed my story and with all my heart I wish that this little girl would love the story and wouldn't make a big deal of it, still would keep dreaming about dragons and feel happy about having such a precious whistle and a piece of "potentially" a dragon skin!

On it's belly it says: "Faithful to you".. in dragon language, of course :)

Thank you for reading this story, 

Hugs x

Skinner Blend Leaves

Recently I was making couple of journals and I had a lot of skinner blend left over. I decided to play with it and came up with some nice elements which I really liked and I decided to work on them on a more professional level and made a tutorial and some brooches and also a beautiful necklace.
I hope you like these! I will let you guys know when the tutorial is out so you can see how I make them.

And here is the necklace. It is not yet assembled, just put together! I am waiting for super glue to arrive lol :) I like how organic it looks like and it will perfectly fit my evening dress which is also indigo blue.