A permanent bonsai tree

This piece was a special order :)

Gold-toned wire, jade stone beads, natural river rocks and a glazed clay base make this special little bonsai tree. It's only 19cm tall.

Have you considered growing a real bonsai? I've tried and it's been tricky. Here is a great guide that can help your bonsai bloom (rather than shrivel!).

Going black

Today I'm going black to support the anti SPOA and PIPA movement.

Do you want your internet censored? Do you want your web page under scrutiny by the government? Do you want to risk being closed down because some big business thinks you are impinging on their copyright? Don't risk the amazing and free-spirited voice of the internet that has been creating and supporting individual voices for years.

Piracy is the worst type of theft, stealing other's hard-earned ideas and creations is the most despicable form of flattery. But these laws are not the way to protect us.

This year's Jack-o-melon has been born!

So we hunted down our quarry at the grocery store and set to carving him a handsome countenance. And a spider. AND a dinosaur. But I regress.

Here we go, with guts in a bowl:

Yep, that's the same tablecloth as seen in the first ever jack-o-melon. I love that thing. $2 from the local discount store, flannel-backed vinyl with 'kiss the cook'. It makes me smile :)

Nearly ready:

Ta daaaaaa:

I think this year the spider is my favourite.

While carving I asked Xavier if he would like to help scoop out the innards. He said 'no'. I said 'but if you don't scoop out the inside you'll just be watching. Don't you want to do a bit?' To which he responded 'that's ok Mum, I'll do the eating bit'. And that's a big reason why we have a jack-o-melon. Gotta love kids!

Tis the season to be scary

So, Halloween is rapidly approaching. I love Halloween, really I do. My problem lays in the fact that it is not really Halloween in the Southern Hemisphere; that it is really Beltane, not Samhain; and that time is so very limited right now that I feel as though I scarcely have the time to smell the roses, never mind picking some to decorate the home.

That being said, With X in preschool he has become very aware of Halloween (based mostly on the fact he has yet another excuse to dress up as a pirate, I suspect) and is really quite excited. This of course reminds me of the joy of the season so we have been celebrating our 'Samhain' in a spring-like fashion.

While we have been tending our garden - 2 enormous zucchinis to date and plentiful herbs - we have been discussing how the seasons work and why there is a cycle to everything. So, as we have in Halloweens past, we will be celebrating this year by carving our newest jack-o-melon. Since I totally made that up on my own years ago and to my knowledge have been the first person to jack-o a melon rather than a pumpkin, I totally claim it. Yep, you heard it here first folks ;P

Behold! the Jack-o-melon!
Our two previous jack-o-melons turned out quite spectacularly. The first was an astonishing success, liberally sprinkled with a sense of wtf? It WORKED? And the giddy overload of happy-creative-hormones.

Jack-o-melon. Type #2.
So this year we will be carving our melon and we also plan to have our own little Halloween party the weekend before. Which will probably include a vast array of winsomely scary treats and a child's Halloween movie, followed by something suitably adult-scary that I would probably do best to avoid.

Added to this should be some fresh flower decorations and possibly some window drawings if I can rustle up a chunky chalk pen.

All in all, a respectable nod to the false Samhain and another venture into teaching the children the importance of seasons, seasonal eating, respecting the earth and drawing a shitload of skulls.

New swap!

This little guy has been driving me nuts over the past few weeks.He complains, he knocks his jar off the bench, he tries to eat passing souls.

Quite frankly, I have grown so weary of his incessant whinging that I have come perilously close to squishing his fuzzy imp body. Luckily, I was partnered with an imp-wielding warlock in the World of Warcraft OTT (one tiny thing) swap. She has happily taken him off my hands to help keep her focused during raids.

 

Polymer clay over wire armature, acrylic paint, faux fur, marker, wire.

More Voidwalker joy!

In addition to finding my voidwalker sculpture as a Featured Project on Craftster, I have also been featured in the latest edition of the official World of Warcraft magazine.

I was interviewed last year and sent through photos of my work and have been eagerly awaiting the publication. I was honoured to be one of the half-dozen WoW crafters to be chosen as featured artisans.

It's amazing how much has come out of one last minute Christmas present for my brother, I never really considered myself as a skilled sculptor but I am beginning to rethink that. Perhaps I should be flexing my sculpting muscles some more!

A special thanks to WoW magazine :D

Featured Project!

Surprisingly enough my humble little voidwalker from World of Warcraft has made the featured projects on Craftster! I was stunned to log on tonight and see my little guy up on the front page.

 Such an honour to be named on the front page!

My latest tiny Griffon

This little griffon is a girl, I haven't named her since she is a gift for a fabulous friend who gave me a pushbike.

I have included some before-paint pics too so you can see her naked :D.

 

  

  

  

  

  

To show scale

New girly griffon meeting Griff, my first tiny griffon sculpture. Awww.

She is polymer clay (mix of Fimo and Sculpey III), wire, acrylic paint, felt, chain and a cats-eye bead. I am quite happy that I could recreate the style of my first griffon. She is definitely different though, a little chunkier for one, but try not to mention it to her face,

My new wheels!

My outstanding friend and co-worker Carole is going to give me her bike! Yay! I have never seen it but it's purple :D and that is all I need to know.

Now I need to make her a thank you gift, she loves my little Griff so I was thinking of a gift involving something similar.

 

  

This is an amazingly generous gift and such a great surprise. I was going to op-shop a bike but this way I get a great girly bike in a fabulous colour and I know it has been taken care of.

I can't wait to post some pics and get stuck into pimping my ride!

A loooong day

I have had a very long day, a long weekend actually, sculpting shapes for my new jewelery/art endeavor. If i can get this to work the way it looks in my mind, I will have my first shop items before you know it!


How did your weekend go? Any new crafty avenues?

Today's work in progress, bunnies for an Easter mood

I have been thinking about my upcoming tutorials and keep coming back to Easter. I thought I would try out a simple sculpting project to see if it would be suitable for a tutorial. Polymer clay and some basic sculpting tools and viola! Bunnies.

This was also my chance to try out Fimo clay, until now I have only used Sculpey III since it is the only one easily available at my craft stores. I found some Fimo a while ago at a store a little out of my way.

The Fimo was much firmer and resisted fingerprints quite well. It needs a little extra kneading time but I have found that once a blob is kneaded, it stays softer than the packaged block for the next time you use a piece. I thought it would not take sculpting impressions but was pleased to see even my softest strokes stayed on the clay.

 

In progress

All fired up, lol. Accented with acrylic paints in raw umber and gold, golden bunny has some metallic gold stamping ink on him too.

To show sizing

I am quite pleased with the results. I think the white bunny would be a suitable form for a tutorial, he is a carved egg shape basically.

I would appreciate your opinions. Do you think a tutorial would be good?

Sculpted voidwalker gift for brother

Hi All

Here was my last-minute crafted gift for my brother. A fellow World of Warcraft player, he has an 80 Paladin, Rogue and Warlock. So close to Christmas there was noooo way I was attempting to sculpt one of his toons so I went for a Warlock pet instead.

"A voidwalker!" I think to myself, "that should be easy". Famous last words...

Sadly my local craft stores only stock Sculpey III. Seriously inept for proper sculpting but I am rather used to it by now.

So, meet my voidwalker. Foil, wire and bamboo armature with Sculpey III and acrylic highlights. Yes, the clay was blue/purple, I just gave him depth with acrylics.

Base is clay and cotton wool painted with acrylics and permanent marker.

Tag is a Photoshop creation.

He resides in a recycled glass jam jar, he does need the occasional breather but only with proper supervision since the cheeky buggers have a knack for disappearing into the shadows.

Miniature fairy sculpture

This little guy was a gift to a new friend back in 2008. He is the first life-like sculpture I have ever made and I completely fluked it :D. He is good old Sculpey III, a mix of beige, translucent and gold micak. It went ok but the Sculpey is quite stickey after working it for a while so I half-baked him, sanded and scraped him, then re-fired and sanded some more. I probably made him all wrong to proper sculptors, but he came together in the end.


Yes, this is a boy and yes, he does have boy bits so please do not keep reading if you are offended!

He is quite tiny and lies on his little padded leaf. And he is sealed only with a buffing of furniture wax. His wings are acetate photocopies cut to size and glued in after baking - I can certainly improve the finish next time I think. His hair is flutter yarn scraps attached with white glue.

In all honesty a lot of dolls freak me out and I have never been one of those people who collects figurines, but he just had to be made. I learned later that he had to go to one Craftster in particular which was a little awkward since I didn't actually know her and had to start my message with 'please don't think this is too weird, but I have something for you...'. But it all worked out and now he is living with his new mummy and daddy.

Of course, being an artist that doesn't really collect figurines I have more ideas in my head begging to be made reality. Perhaps it's a matter of these little guys want to be born and I am their outlet, if you follow my thinking...

If I do make more, I think they will all be asleep. Staring vacant eyes creep me out.

Jack-o-melon. Type #2

This year's jack-o-melon!!

To learn more about the birth of the jack-o-melon (I figured it out in my own wee mind so I claim it. So there :P) Behold! the Jack-o-melon!

As you can see, we varied from the previous shape to massage the imagination into something new.

Once again, filling the house with red-glowy Halloween glee!

Behold! the Jack-o-melon!

Basically, I live in Australia where pumpkins are now $4.00 per kilo but watermelons are only $1.30 per kilo, plus I don't really like pumpkin but I love watermelon. So thus the Jack'o'lantern was born!

Full of glowy red goodness...

In the making...

Front - face...

I love this much more than my previous pumpkins and it was sooo much easier to carve! And the red insides just jump with Halloween glee. There was some debate about whether the candles would work but they go great and are slowly drying out the inside. I tipped out all the excess water first and packed it full of paper towels for a few hours.

For the record, after being out in the air for a few hours these beauties are still damp inside but work wonderfully. A tealight candle will suffice but you could use a bigger candle if you really wanted to.

They get saggy after about a week and I wouldn't suggest leaving any jack-o'ed fruit or veg in the sun all day, so if you pop him out at night and leave him in the cool and shade during the day you should have a great jack-o-melon for a few weeks.

Oh, and a bucket-supply of watermelon for eating and mixing with vodka? Score!