Divine Nature: Insect Heads

To continue my exploration of Universal Creativity, today I stood into the Macro World and decided to concentrate on the head of a Fly and other insects. Simple, but how amazing! I am completely sure that our world is as amazing in the MACRO scale as much as in MICRO. So no matter how far away or how deep into the object or space you are heading.. everything is designed and mastered up to perfect perfection!
ISN'T THIS SUPER COOL? Aren't you already boiling with creative juices? I made 25 jewellery collections in my head when looking at these. Click on the picture to ZOOM IN!

Thank you for reading, 

May your day be blessed with creativity!

Giraffes for sale!

Hello everyone! :)

Unfortunately this journal didn't reach the sale price and the action didn't succeed, but the good news is that this journal is now available for sale!

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE!

 

 

Red Eyed Frog Journal by Mandarin Duck

Hello Everyone!

Thanks for popping in :) Today is a simple preview of a wonderful red eyed, green skinned frog from Amazonia rain forests. I love how vibrant are the colours and how jolly this little froggy looks like. My customer is in love with these red eyed frogs and he was especially desperate to see the blue striped belly on his frog's body. So I made sure I painted it properly as close to the original as possible. Also I decided to keep the whole piece quite matte and only to varnish the frog in glossy varnish to give it a wet look. 

New Giraffe Tutorial

Hello everyone!
I am so glad to announce that I have a new Giraffe PDF tutorial available for sale! ENJOY!

Death's-head Hawkmoth A6 journal

Hello guys :)
I know I've been busy and worked on a lot of projects for the past couple of weeks. Busy times and a lot of posts for you to look at!

Sometimes I like sharing some pictures of work in progress as then you guys can see how it was made and learn some new techniques for free.
As you can see I started from quite simple shapes and cut outs and gradually sculpted my way in!
Then I used Mica Powders ( Perfect Pearls and other brands) to build up a shimmery colour base. After the journal was baked I kept colouring the wings with acrylics to show even more details.

This journal was ordered by a customer and was supposed to look like the original journal he already had. He loves Death's-head Hawkmoths and so the main element was supposed to be it and all the rest just some creative writer's background :)

Giraffe Journal "Mother's Love" by Aniko Kolesnikova (Mandarin Duck)

Hello everyone :) 

Today I would like to present you my newest journal "Mother's Love". This journal was a commission work for an the International Giraffe Conservation Organisation. They contacted me recently and offered to participate in their yearly auction with my art. The money we would raise by this auction will go towards the charity to save Giraffes all over the world. I loved this idea and decided to make a little A6 journal with a baby and mother giraffe in a very sweet loving pose. Giraffes can't hold hands, can't they!? 

I also made a PDF tutorial out of it (took some pictures of the whole project for now, but will edit it soon for you to enjoy practicing making giraffes!). I thought it's a striking design and many of you will want to try and create similar designs. Who doesn't love giraffes? :) They are so sweet!

So here are the photos and wait for a bit, I will release a PDF soon too :) 

 

 Thanks for visiting and reading, 

Have a great day!

Drops of Color

Hi everyone!

Today I would like to present you another beautiful bracelet that I worked on during the last couple of months. Not all the time of course, just during :)

I named this bracelet "Drops of Color" as this is what it basically is :) Bracelet full of lovely, colourful drops and beautiful sparkle and shimmer.

It is made from polymer clay and is decorated with svarowski crystals and other metallic elements in different colours. All the textures and effect are achieved 100% by hand.

Once I created a test necklace with a very similar effect and I managed to sold it in Malta during the gallery sale, so I decided to make another item like this as it looked so joyful and happy, but also very chic and night out orientated ( if I can put it this way...).

Item is available in my ETSY SHOP. 

Enjoy the pictures!

The Cuff of Purifying Energy by Mandarin Duck

Hello everyone!

I am quite excited to present you one of my new jewellery collection pieces - "The Cuff of Purifying Energy".

I decided to name this bracelet : "The Cuff of Purifying Energy" because it reminds me of a magical artefact piece and it was inspired by my love for labradorite crystals, starry dark sky with northern lights and beautiful, slightly golden moonlight. Labradorite stones are believed to have a power of protection and their magnificent transforming colourful ever transforming sparkle can easily make this crystal to be one of the most beautiful on the planet.

This bracelet is a part of "Ancient Stories" jewelry collection by Mandarin Duck aka Aniko Kolesnikova which I started two years ago and I still keep adding to the line from time to time. This collection is inspired by heavy medieval metals, little golden sparks of fire and beautiful semiprecious stones (for this bracelet it's labradorite). Pieces in this collection have rather different styles but they all are unified by black and gold/silver tones, different material imitations and shiny magical speckles.
This bracelet opens in the middle allowing a comfortable fit and it's oval shape makes it wrap around your wrist better, without leaving empty spaces and avoiding excess dangling on your hand. Hunting for such jewellery supply is always an adventure itself and when you find one, you feel very inspired straight away.
Very unique item, one of a kind (OOAK).

At the moment it is available in my ETSY SHOP.

Here are some more pictures and I am sorry that this type there will be no pictures of progress as for some reason I was so drawn into making this bracelet that I forgot to take couple of shots!

"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!

Multi-Shaped Dottie Cutters

Hello my dear friends!

This is just a quick update on your requests about having Dottie tools in different shapes!
This is a bit time consuming to make and require some skills of working with pliers, but this is what I came up with.. to make a whole set it took me about 30 minutes and I used flat and rounder jewellery making pliers I had ( see the picture)...
This is what I got for now, perhaps tomorrow I will play with them and clay and will find out what all these cool shapes look like when cut out :)

You might be scared to play with your only set and I understand that. I also won't bother making these different shaped sets for sale as this will take all of my time and won't be worth not the time, not the effort. But just so that you know... there is an option, it is rather easy to do.. And.. Soon I will have some other same sized sets of Dotties available so that you can buy same size in a pack of 10 for example and play with creating your own sets! Maybe not flowers or hearts, but surely it would be handy to make your own squares, triangles and especially drops that can be used for tears, petals and many more.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you would risk doing this yourself? Or is it something you would never risk doing with your Dotties?

Dotties are back!

Hello my sweet Dottie lovers and those who haven't met them yet! :) 

I am happy to announce that Dotties are back in stock and are available for shipping in the next 4-5 days! You can start ordering again my lovelies! 

I am eager to see what projects you will do with dottie tools. If there is anything you want to show me, send me the link in the comment or to [email protected]

You can also post on Facebook and tag me in! xxx

ORDER NOW?!

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR SET

Here is some cool stuff and technical info!

THESE ARE THE SIZES THAT ARE NOW IN THIS NEW SET! 8 IN TOTAL!

COMPARISON OF OLD AND NEW SET!

PACKAGING REMAINS THE SAME.

AND SOME INSPIRATION...

YES, I WANT THEM NOW!!!

Thank you so much for loving the dotties and for all of your support!

Love, 

Dragon Journal Tutorial ( Part 2)

CLICK HERE FOR THE TUTORIAL!! 
Enjoy and comment! Okay?

This tutorial Part 2 is all about textures, decorations and finishing touches! 

Dragon Journal Tutorial from Polymer Clay (Part 1)

Hello everyone!

I am so glad to announce that the 1st part of the Dragon Journal video is finally out and I am in the middle of editing the second part of it. It's a long video and quite a time consuming.

Unfortunately, as this project was a custom order, I rushed to send it to the client and ended up forgetting to take professional pictures of it. So now it's gone forever,  but at least we will have a video of how it was made and I hope you guys will be able to learn something from it. 

So here it is! 

CLICK ON THIS PICTURE TO WATCH!

Click on this picture to watch the video now.

Here are some work in progress pictures I had made with my phone.

 Stay tuned to for the 2nd part of this video closer to Friday!

Thanks for reading! 

Have fun, 

Floral Journal Tutorial

Hello my sweet honey bunnies and other visitors!

I would like to be quick and to share with you my latest Floral Journal tutorial! It is A6 size and is made from Premo polymer clay. Here it the tutorial ( click on the words under the picture!)

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE TUTORIAL

And here are some more photos of the journal and you can see even more on my Flickr Page

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 (story continues..)

Hello my sweet honey bunnies!

You probably remember a post I posted few weeks ago about the dragon whistle and a little girl who was supposed to receive it. Today I would like to proudly show the pictures of a happy receiver.
Her face will say it all!

Here she just discovered the box, opened it and tries to understand what these
 bits are and the dragon is still in the package.

And here she already unpacked it! 

And this is the letter the Dragon Whistle Maker Man wrote to her :)

I really enjoyed this project and the outcome was fantastic. Projects like this really make me feel good and happy. I wish I could have more of them :)

Thanks a lot for reading,