Angel Picture - part II - daylight

Having two young children pushes me to work at the night time, when the light is artificial and the photos of the process are a bit dull I would say. If I work more than one night I can take some more photographs on the next day, but not always I do. I finished my picture at night so in the morning I had only a little time left to do some more photos of the details and picture itself before I gave it away to its new home. This is how it turned out:

Little Angel for Hope - part I

I had a great pleasure to create a picture for the lovliest baby ever, Hope. She is nearly three months now and as adorable as you can possibly imagine.

So here it is, a frame to start with, some clay for my angel's dress and some other for the body parts...

After a bit of claying I manage to create sort of a flower cane for a frill....I am not good at canning yet but I hope to master those as soon as I have time to do so.

That evening I also I had a meeting with my new heart shape cutters...

I painted the frame and applied those hearts around, than I painted the frame two more times. The last one layer was with golden acrylic paint which I later distressed for a nice vintage finish.

After a few hours of gluing, painting, distressing and gluing the picture was ready.

Meet Mela&Mimi

I just couldn't not to share :) I moaned about  guinea pigs for a long time now. To be honest, I was quite fussy about "the right one" (colour-wise) so it took me a while and finally I found it!
So here She is, Mela.....

To keep her company, as it is adviced that guinea pigs should at least be keept in pairs, Liliana choose for herself another one - Mimi.

 

The look of Matylda's face is just priceless! Aren't they adorable ( all three of them? :))

Inspirations - Brooches

 

 

As I love brooches, I just couldn't not to share this! I found it on Ronna's Sarvas Weltman facebook page. Enjoy!

 

 

After watching it I think I need to buy a few more or DO some urgently! The Autumn is so great season to wear them and brooches are soooo feminine!

One of my favourite jewelery artists are Ford&Forlando. Their designs, color and texture combinations are just wonderful. I like their brooches a lot.

If you look for some more inspiration, check my pinterest board here . I have a few great artists gathered in one place. But mind the Pinterest, it is very addictive once you are there, and don't say I didn't warn you!

at night inside a nutt shell....

Here is what is laying on my table at the moment, another polymer clay picture I just started to work on..I am really exited about this one :) I use Moon Push mold from Amaco for my sun and moon shapes and cookie cutter for my stars...it is going to be really lovely.

some new work.......... finally

I have tried to sit behind my polymer table for a while already. I just couldn't get into my routine again.
When I finally did sit, I wasn't happy at all with what I made and I squashed everything in one big lump of clay. I took some pictures of the process for a learning purpose, but I didn't manage to take pictures of the final pieces. It was too dark with my artificial light and I just remind myself I wanted to take the pictures in the morning. It is I just forget later on, and before realising I don't have those pictures, I squashed everything :( Obviously I regret now, lesson learnt - always, ALWAYS wait until next day before destroying your work!

Yesterday I tried to make another version of the pendant I am working on, but I am affraid it is too big again, means too heavy. Having in mind I want to add some beads here and there, it really can be too heavy at the momment. This is my first pendant I am working on and as I am rather a begginer with polymer clay - all is new to me. Mabye I should try to use ultra light polymer clay as a core bead...I will have to consider it.

Did you noticed I don't have streaks on the second photo? This is really a mystery to me, mabye it is just about particular settings and artificial lightining? I will have to check it tomorow morning.

I need a new camera!

Ahhh well...I think my camera is broken. This is a bad news for me but in the same way it was already on my list of things I need to buy soon. I just wasn't expecting to have to buy one so soon tho ;)).
It was fine one day and the next weird streaks started to appear on the screen when focus button is pressed. We where at the park and we took some photographs, but Liliana took some at home without my knowledge (she isn't allowed to take camera)...and from that point the streaks appear...

I found this on the SD card

This is really lovely picture :) But you can spot those streaks quite easily...anyway, I look through the photographs she has taken to check it out.The first one is fine, the second one she looks at the camera herself, but stands against the sun and the streaks are there. I think she pressed the focus buton too long or something. I just don't know what happened really.

The best tea in a park ever!

This is exactly what I was doing last week ;)) Jasmin tea from teapigs...just lovely.......

Hope you had a great time as well. The weather here in Glasgow was jus marvelous!

Out and About

It was quite sunny last week here. I tried to go out with Liliana and Matylda as much as possible, enjoyed the sun and a bit of our long lost summer. I am always amazed with children's admiration of the world. Even the tiniest of all insects can be in the center of the their attention.
I try to learn from them how to admire the nature around me despite of the gray shades of every day life.
It was a lot easier when I was a teenager without much of the responsibilietes of the adoulthood.
I can still stare for hours at the sky and the passing clouds. I still have a smile on my face when I run  through the field without my shoes on, when I try to feel the softeness of the sand on the beach or when I try to do a sandcastle with a flag made from a lolypop stick and a buble gum paper. I am not all lost yet, at least I like to think so :)

I hope you had a lovely week as well!

An Angel picture - finish

I finally manage to finish my Angel picture, and today the picture happily wandered to the new owners. I hope they will like it as much as I do. I managed to take some photos of it to share with you.

I am quite happy with the final "look and feel" of it. Again it took me a while before I decided what

I would like to do with the background. I change my mind twice to finally came up with this one. I am not sure if it shows on the photos but colours match perfectly with each other. I was afraid it would turn to yellowish in the end but it didn't. I mixed some golden paint along with two shades of yellow and white paint, also I added some textures on flat stars as you can see on the close ups.

I also painted one of my Harlequin faces. The first two I made a year ago (you can check it here). I prepared them as magnets, but  this time I am going to do a picture perhaps.

An Angel picture part II.

Hello Everyone :) I am quite busy lately in my studio finishing my Angel picture and experimenting in a meantime. I did all the parts I needed, now just painting and gluing left. It looks interesting already, laying just on the ceramic tile. Don't you think? :)

I have some sort of a shadow frame for it, not sure if it will fit under the glass tho. I have to distress it all with gold and white paint. This should look lovely., at least I hope so....

In a meantime I almost finish my Harlequin face and made another one half way through. I need to take pictures of them. I just forgot again.

Here is another experiment I did yesterday while waiting for my angel's bits to bake:

I used parts from the cane I did earlier. Quite like the composition and contrast from this little red part on the edge of black base, but I am going to change it for blue, with distress. Also I am going to work on the base color, add another layer to both shell shapes maybe. Generally I treat it as a good start for something interesting here.

Obviously everyone could easily see I am under big influence of Ronna Sarvas Weltman at the moment. Personally I don't mind this as through centuries artists use to learn different techniques by coping the best artists they could find. I highly admire Ronna's work, I just hope I will be able to add my own dimention, and new touch to it in the "not so far away" future. I know it won't be easy but I like chalenges.

An Angel picture

I have some commissions I am working on at the moment, another three polymer clay doll's pictures. Hurray!
One of them is An Angel, golden-white with some additional polymer clay bits on the background. Here is a quick preview of the angel:

I still need to paint it, add the wings, and feet. Obviously I need to do the frame with the background as well to finish it off.

While I am working on the pictures I do some canes in a meantime, from my scraps. With those ones left after making the angel, I made a cane I am going to use with my next Harlequin face.

I have to remember to leave it for a while before reducing, to minimise distortions. How long do you usually wait? Do you leave it for a night or just for a few minutes/hours? Do you wait at all? I will happily learn from the experience of others if you want to share :))

Hope you had a wonderful an peaceful weekend!

How do you price your unique pieces?

I just came upon a great observation post about pricing, on the blog I found just yesterday.  You can find it up here. This post led me to thinking about how accurate my own prices are. This is always hard, most of my items I often sell under priced  and as often people attitude is as this first women mentioned in the post...anyway, a while ago, I found another great post about pricing and valuating your own creations, you will find it here and has a great picture which came along with it....

What do you think about this FORMULA? I hope one day I will be able to actually use it :)))

Obstacle is the mother of invention

I have finally finished the frame for the doll I showed you yesterday. Here is how it turned out:

I quite like it, although next time I will do some sort of ground/grass as well instead of just a coat of paint. Interestingly, my biggest struggle was the frame itself. This was my first time I had to distress or prepare a frame.
I had a different idea in mind. I wanted to place the doll on its own in the middle of the frame decorated with some polymer clay flowers. I planed to paint the background blue and the frame red. Later in the evening I found my acrylic paints to be dried out and I ended up just with gold and red one... Obstacle is the mother of invention and pure creativity. I learnt this very well when I was at my university. Each time when we were told just to "create something"the outcome was OK, but not spectacular. The more obstacles we had the more interesting and creative the final results were.

It was way too late to pop up to the shop to buy a new paint set and I HAD to finish it for today, so..here it is.. I think it looks lovely and I already have some ideas for whole new set.
Let me know what do you think, do you like how it turned out?
If you like it or would you like to have similar one, fell free to leave a comment or to email me :)

a gift for a friend

It has been a while since I made those dollies, but I made a new one a few days ago for my colleague's daughter who is nine tomorrow. 

She is a lot bigger than the ones I made as a magnets, here you have a photo for comparison:

They actually look like a mum with her daughter, when standing together :)

The detail on her dress isn't what I was looking for in the first place but I think it turned out rather nice.

I am going to frame her. I went to the car boot market on Sunday morning and found a few treasures there to work on:

Now I need to prepare this one for a bigger doll, just need to get rid of the bird first....

I think this one for a smaller doll will be perfect, just need a coat of paint and some finishing

Well, go back to my table now, I need to finish one for tomorrow.