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, 

Meet Snowie (Work in Progress)

Hello my sweet honey bunnies!

Today I am so excited to share my amazing toy making journey which started in the end of January when I got so much inspired by amazing soft toys made by Santani. After that I spent the whole month sketching, trying out different ideas, inventing the character and the whole line of creatures. I had to find a perfect animal mix and some of them looked good and some were weird.

I loved the idea of a snow leopard but the antlers looked a bit too long and just didn't feel right. So I decided to start working on the body and just see how it goes. I ordered some lovely artificial fire on Ebay and as soon as I received it I jumped into patterns. This was the hardest part and I can honestly admit that I really lack of pattern making skills. I kind of have artistic mind, architecture and 3D vision, but making a toy was hard. See for yourself. Professional seamstress would just give me F+ for this :) 

But it was fun and even if the shape of my creature was quite primitive, somehow I knew it will work.

I started working on the paws and I made them from Fimo Classic polymer clay (black) and then painted with acrylic paints and varnished afterwards.

This was the first time I posted up a picture on Facebook to tease you guys and made you guess who do these paws could belong to. When the paws were ready and got attached to the body I could clearly see that the second animal in this little cute fluffy monster's body is a bunny. For quite a long time, I would even say for couple of weeks, I was busy at work and couldn't get myself to finish Snowie and so he remained soul-less in the plastic bag waiting for the right moment.

Then came the day of face sculpting and I jumped into it and wouldn't stop until I was done.

The process was quite time consuming and I was wondering how will I make a face that is curved inside to follow the shape of the head. Here I can be grateful to my workplace which happily donated me a glass mannequin head about a year ago. It was a perfect shape and so I started to work on it.

I think there is no need to say that I spent the whole day making this face and I was so glad that I made myself this fur brushing tool. It makes life so much easier. Closer to midnight after 3 separate bakes and adding and adding layers and textures I finally finished the clay part and also managed to completely do the paint job on the face. So here is before and after shot. I really like them both.

I went to sleep excited and woke up early this morning to continue working on Snowie. 

Snowie was born on 19th of February 2014 and received a beautiful heart (sawn into his body) which I bought in one of Brighton Beach shops this winter. So Snowie is not a toy, he is a creature with a heart and a soul and I am waiting for one of the kind spirits to get inside Snowie and live there. They say that if a toy is very loved by a child, then kind spirits of our universe can decide to live inside the toy and feed from child's love. In return they will work the protective powers on a child so that he is always healthy and safe. I like this kind of spirits. I am welcoming mine x.

This post is way too long so I will post up the final result pictures in the next post in a second :)

Thanks a lot for reading.

Lots of love