Meet Snowie (Ready!)

As I promised straight after showing my work in progress I am writing this. I don't think that any text is necessary here. Let the pictures speak for themselves.  I enjoyed my self portrait photoshoot and I am sure Snowie was happy to finally appear on Facebook and Blogger pages after so much anticipation.

And of course some more pictures of Snowie on it's own.

And of course the bunny bum xoxox

I truly hope you enjoyed the final pictures and I am sure we will see and hear from Snowie and his friend Beannie very soon as they settle down in my room.

Thank you so much for all of your support,

Please let me know what if you like Snowie (in comments below).

Have a lovely day,

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

Glass Eyes

Here are some glass hand painted eyes I made during couple of months. I was making more today and more complicated ones so decided to take a pic for you guys ^^

You can make eyes like this too! Here is the free Youtube tutorial I made quite a while ago:

  My most complicated eye is the closest large green dragon eye where I used 3 different colours + black. I am slowly learning how to paint gradients, make more organic and natural looks. And because it is so much cheaper than buying ready eyes from Ebay or Etsy, this also makes me very happy. Besides, this option forces me to challenge myself every time I do it.

Thanks a lot for reading and I hope some of new people in my community will find this blog post useful.

Beannie

Hello my sweet honey bunnies!

Today I would like to introduce you to my very first ever made soft toy  - Beannie. 

Beannie is a mix of possum, snow leopard and a baby deer. He was my experimental project which helped me to understand the process of making soft toys. He is full of imperfections as he was made from an old T-shirt and was stitched with dark blue thread and painted with acrylic paints. Some of his body parts are of course made from polymer clay. 

Creating Beannie was quite easy, but also challenging and time consuming as me and sawing are two  things that don't mix (as I thought before). In school I was one of the worst girls with creative household things like cooking, sewing and knitting. But then I was only 12-14 years old. My mind wasn't ready for it, OK? 

So here he is, little creature from a planet BEANOU, and although he is one big imperfection, he is now my favourite toy, I cary him with me everywhere and I put him to sleep every night in a coconut shell bed and I always make sure he has extra blanket underneath him so that he feels comfortable while watching his beanie dreams. 

Beannie likes to learn new things and is very curious creature. He can spend hours sitting next to me and watching me work or paint. He is so dedicated that he doesn't even move and you need to be extra careful to see how sometimes he blinks and nods his little head as if he is confirming everything I teach him. He is a perfect companion to slouch on the couch or to watch a movie. We do so many things together and he is always there wondering and learning. 

Beanie is only 4 days old and he is one of a kind. Recently I was thinking about my childhood and remembered that I haven't got any childhood toys left in my mom's house. We gave them all away to children in need, to those kids that haven't got parents and are not adopted. We have quite a lot of places like this in Latvia and I am glad that perhaps my toys became good friends for some of them poor guys. 

I hope you like my new little friend. Please let me know what you think of him in comments below.

Thanks a lot,

New Branch On My "Life Tree"

Couple of weeks ago I got overflown with the blast of cuteness from an amazing Russian artist (Santani) who I found from someone else's shared post. This girl is making amazing soft toys with use of faux fur and polymer clay and so I completely fell in love with what she is doing. In the meantime I was entering 2014 with a lot of hopes for a change, better times, some new dreams and total remodelling of my own website and my blog.

You all know me as a cute Aniko who makes cute tutorials, calls her followers "Honey Bunnies", likes to paint in watercolour and draw doodle drawings, likes to decorate her room, grows a mini garden of pretty flowers on her windowsill and has the most adorable cute little dog Milo. I love seaside, pastel tones, all sorts of handmade stuff, shabby chic and vintage styles, tea candles and feather earrings in bright colours. And so all of my life rotates around flowery patterns, little creatures and birdies and only these things are truly making me happy and excited, make me feel more like myself.

But… because I like challenging myself and put myself out of my comfort zone, I recently caught myself thinking that for the past half of a year all I did was working in photography studio and as for creative part of my life I was doing some absolutely random custom orders, which were mostly made from black clay, were dark or contained elements I don't like making, like human beings or architecture or perspectives. I know I can do it, I know I can do it good because during my creative education I managed to develop quite widely to different directions. But sadly these different directions so much liked by majority of my latest clients are taking me quite far away from things that truly make me happy.

I am a Mandarin duck with a very very kind heart. And I always know who I am, but life throws me to different directions from time to time and makes me stay here and there for a while.. and makes me forget for some time who I am. 

This may sound quite weird that I saw these toys and then completely changed what I am doing now in my life as it is not entirely true. I will always remain myself, as a polymer clay artist, the girl who does creative stuff, makes video tutorials and even journals and figurines from time to time. But mostly I will just shred some layers of darkness and dust that made my bright feathers become quite dull. It may not show on the outside and perhaps nobody even had noticed the change, but in my heart every day I was and still do quite strongly suffer from the difference in  what I truly want and what I have to do. 

And so 2014 became a beginning, a sort of kick for my big change and some circumstances followed in my personal life and my family really inspired and encouraged me.

As you all know, when I turned 28, I became a vegetarian. For 2 months now I am not eating meat completely and am only consuming fish products from time to time, but I am not eating any mammals at all. This was a great big step in my life and I am feeling better in all aspects, especially knowing that I don't have to kill a life being to satisfy my starvation. Sooner or later even fish will be in the past, but as fisherman's daughter, unfortunately, I found myself being used to fish too much. But I am fighting with this too. Fish is alive creature and does not deserve me eating it :) Not even in a fish finger form :)

Another change that happened was my discovery of Vedas. This knowledge triggered me to become a vegetarian as well as made me understand a lot about humans and family relationship, love, partners, care about our planet, birds and animals, plants and trees and of ofcourse friendship. It also made me realise how wonderful and fair this universe is and, what was the most pleasant, my study satisfied my hunger for ancient secrets I always wanted to know but couldn't get a source and an answer to some of my questions. I won't go too much into it. Those who are interested can find a lot of information online or libraries and those who are not are already looking at me with suspicion. So enough about that.

Mostly I am changing for good, I feel this new stream, this new branch growing on the tree of my life and the whole tree with all the roots is becoming more stable, strong, green and fresh. I feel that the core me is becoming stronger, I feel healthier and kinder. I lost my "feeling sorry for myself" feeling, envy for more lucky ones, a need to become like somebody else.

I will always want to have a house with a garden by the sea, children, fascinating career and all the money I could desire. But one thing had changed - attitude. I don't feel desperate anymore. I did let it  all go. I told myself that perhaps I am not destined to live in my own house, I am not destined to be rich or not destined to move out from the rented crowded house we are living in… I accepted my current circumstances… and you know… as soon as I did it, it felt like a huge mountain fell of my shoulders. 

I don't care anymore. I am feeling content where I am now. I don't hate this house, I don't hate my financial situation or this country. I am feeling good. 

And so now the main part. What in all this for you? 

Well you will only get the benefits ^^. If I feel good, I can give more, teach more, share more and surprise more. So this needs to be a positive change for all of us in a way.

Thank you very much for reading this post. It is so important for me that I have my followers, people who sometimes write to me and say that my art changed their life (it happened couple of times).. people that say that I make them smile every day, people that say I helped them find themselves and develop their artistic skills and many other wonderful people. Without you, my sweet honey bunnies,  all my journey would be just a life of a regular female, perhaps a mother and later on perhaps a granny. But it would be nowhere near as exciting as you make it be. I am truly grateful for everything you give me and now, more than ever, I am ready to give back.

I LOVE YOU!