Desk of the Day 09/01/2014 More sushi cats

I'm back in London after a relaxing couple of weeks back up north. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things with uni work, I'm so excited that I get to make my first whole pair of shoes this term! Today I'm taking a little time to relax and work on some personal illustration work. Yep you guessed it, more sushi cats!

Here's a close up of some of the details I've been working on. You can find my first sushi cat post here.

Desk of the Day - The land of Ooo

This is my newest Adventure Time order I've been working on. The main theme I was given was "The Land of Ooo" so I've tried to include as many featured of Ooo as possible.

It's been fun to think about the background and surroundings of the characters more in this pair of shoes. I'd love to do a Candy Kingdom themed pair one day.

You can see more of my Adventure Time shoes here, and my other shoes here.

Desk of the Day - Can you guess who it is?

I'm currently working on some Russian Dolls for Chris Simpsons Artist, if you don't know who this guy is check him out. His comedic illustrations and stories always make me laugh. I'm painting these dolls in Chris's infamous illustration style but with a bit of a PonyChops twist.

Can you guess which celebrities I've painted on these dolls? Here's some hints:

1. I'm dead and I like milk.
2. I like corgis.
3. I made art of funny clocks.
4. My nickname is Chewie.
5. Doh!

Desk of the Day - 01/07/2013 - Fluff & Stuff

This is by far the craziest/coolest theme I've been asked for. I bet you won't even be able to guess what's on the other side of the right shoe! Here's a hint, it's NOT Marshmallow Fluff.

These Marshmallow Fluff & tentacle inspired shoes are just awaiting a few more finished details and some neatening up before they're ready to photograph. This project has pushed me to do a much different style to normal, and I feel I've learned and improved through painting them. It's always fun to do something different.

Customised High Tops are available in my Etsy Shop. If you don't have Etsy you can contact me about orders at ponychopsshop @ gmail . com

Marshmallow Fluff is copyright of Durkee-Mower Inc. These are just my own fan art of their retro packaging and I am not associated with them in any way.

Desk of the Day - 30/06/2013 - Pretty in Pink

I managed to get my hands on some pretty awesome stilettos a few weeks ago and have been dying to get painting them. I think they look pretty dramatic without the paint on. They started off baby blue, but after a few coats of paint are now striped in different shades of pink. I love how well the baby blue inside the shoe matches the baby pink paint so perfectly.

This particular set of shoes are going to have a really girly and fun theme, I won't tell you the exact theme just yet though!

If you'd like some custom painted stilettos email me at ponychopsshop @ gmail . com
These are new in so not even in the PonyChops shop just yet!

Desk of the Day - 29/06/13 - I Love NY

Phew, it feels like forever since I've posted on my blog. I've been crazy busy with painting shoes and illustrating some fun projects. I'm hoping I'll have a little more time to update my blog over the next week.

Today I'm working on a few orders, but mostly I'll be working on this New York & Baby themed pattern. This is for the same project I've been working on for a while now, you can see some more work in progress shots from the same project here and here. I got kind of carried away on this project. Unfortunately I don't think I'll be using Little Baby Liberty as a part of this design now, which sucks. I had originally designed the blog around him but stupidly hadn't realised just how restrictive wordpress can be with editing. So I think i'll be sticking with a basic blog template with a bright patterned background. I've definitely learned my lesson for next time!

Desk of the Day 13/06/13 - The Little Bear

Hey everyone! I have some awesome custom orders I'm working on at the moment that I'm really excited about. I'm hoping I'll get chance to post lots of Desks of the Day over the next week or two! Over the past few weeks I seem to have had so many fun projects to work on. I'm so greatful my customers have such fun ideas for me to work on!

This is a project I've been working on a little while, it's for my friend Diana's blog Parents and the City. Remember Little Baby Liberty? This is for the same project. It's taking me a while to finish this project because it's the first blog design I'm doing for someone other than myself, so I want to make it perfect.

This bear is going to be way smaller and may not even make it in to the final design, but I wanted to show you it in a little more detail. Either way it's good practise to be doing more work on illustrator. This guy's not quite finished yet, he needs a few more highlights to make him pop and then we'll see how he looks next to Little Baby Liberty.

Oh and DON'T forget to enter my Pet Portrait giveaway for a chance to win a portrait of your pet by Chopstitch! Only 10 hours left!

Desk of the Day 21/05/13 - Little Baby Liberty

There's still a ton of shading work left to do (especially on the bottom half). And I'm not sure whether to give Little Baby Liberty some nipples, to me it just seems wrong to give a cartoon baby nipples haha. I also spent ages trying to think up ideas of how to have the baby holding a torch without it looking dangerous. So I added a smiley face the the flames to make it look more like a rattle.

This is a logo idea for the New York parenting blog - Parents and the City which is run by my friend Diana. I'm so excited to work with Diana on this project because she's such a creative person and is always great to bounce ideas off. She's also a very skilled writer, so it's going to be great to try and match a blog and logo design to her fun and witty writing style.

Work in Progress & an Instagram catch up

It feels like it's been forever since I did a proper catch up post with pictures. Here's what I've been working on lately, and a couple of pictures of Tofu thrown in for good measure! He's such a little hansy man.

1-4. Some work in progress on my latest projects. So excited to share the shoes with you! They're one of my fav themes yet.

5&6. Tofu enjoyed playing Hobbit Monopoly, his favorite thing to do was to sit in the middle of the board and knock over everything. And a picture of him being a silly cat as usual.

7. Miss Chopstitch sent me a photo of the Russian Dolls I painted for her on her shelf <3

8. I finally made room for the awesome Jeff Soto toy that Ash got me for my birthday. I love having it in my studio, it's inspiring me so much right now.

9&10. Playing around with some designs for the blog & patterns.

11&12. Oh gosh, I'm so so in love with my new Lazy Oaf socks. Especially when combined with my Vegan docs!

A New Years Post (finally!)

After a few days of catching up on my blog reading list I feel like I'm finally back in the blogging world again! Happy New Year everyone!! I hope 2013 brings lots of inspiration and success to my lovely readers.

My Christmas and New Year have been full of friends, family, food, and most importantly dogs and cats! I've been awful at taking pictures this year, there's not even one of our tree! Next year I WILL be more organised.

2013 appears to be off to a good start. Yesterday I signed in to my severely neglected Deviant Art account, only to find some of my Christmas Matryoshka had been chosen to be a Daily Deviation! I couldn't stop smiling for the rest of the day.

I also have a few really fun custom orders I'm working on right now, the new year seems to have brought me lots of inspiration and enthusiasm for my work!

Here are my 2013 goals:

• Sort my health out (last year I was diagnosed with a chronic illness that's limited me a bit more than I would like, this year I'm determined it's not going to get in the way! No more waiting to feel better, I need to just get on with life.)
• Start a range of Christmas cards and do at least 1 Christmas fair
• Work on my own illustration projects
• Give myself weekends off
• Take the dogs on longer walks
• Read my Game of Thrones books
• Go down to London for shoe making classes (eeeeek I'm so excited about this one!!)
• Start a new business (this is all a little hush hush at the moment, I will tell you all about it by the end of the year hopefully, if all goes to plan!)
• Visit my Gran more

I think they're all pretty achievable. The new business is going to be a big and time consuming plan! But I think I have a really original idea, I just need to get my ideas organised into an understandable statement instead of leaving them bouncing about my head or on little memos in my phone.

I'll leave you all with a WIP screen shot. I've been playing about with some more material patterns, I love the little grey cats next to baby blue. This is in no way a finished pattern though!

Update time

This week has been a pretty busy and emotional week.

Other than that, I've had a ton of orders! Which is very exciting. So I've been working none stop. Here are some of my works in progress:

On Friday me and Ash went to see Frisky and Mannish in Lancaster with a couple of our friends. For those of you who don't know who Frisky and mannish are, you need to find them on YouTube. They're a comedic musical duo and they're absolutely hilarious, even my boyfriend who is a comedy snob thinks they're amazing.
I didn't get any pictures but here's a picture of Frisky and Mannish looking fabulous:

Saturday and Sunday were full of tears and goodbyes as I said farewell to one of my best friends who's moving to New Zealand. And on Sunday we drove Ash's little sister down to London for her first year of Uni. Life is gonna seem so strange without seeing those girls on a regular basis!

Here's some Effy love! She's such a baby. She's spent most of the week following me around the house watching me.

I also dyed my hair purple! And realised I'm a bit of a hair dye hoarder. I can't wait for the purple to fade and go all lilacy.

 And here's some cool tops I bought that I forgot to show you:

The cat one is from ebay & the bunny one is from Asda.

Instagram time

I've had lots going on the past few weeks! And as usual I've forgotten to take photos of most of it.
Here's the photos I did take:

I returned from New York to the usual North of England greeting, rain, rain and lots more rain.

Tidying my studio, I love it when everything is colour coordinated & I love my owl mugs, they're perfect for storing paint brushes and water for painting.

Presents and a silly pug card that I decorated for Ginge's birthday.

I bought these figurines that I'd seen in New York on ebay for half the price. I like them because Ash likes bacon and I like tofu.

Lots of Work in progress.

Busy Busy!!

I've been very busy the past few days painting all of the bright coloured brogues! And i've been painting a pair of kiwi bird, mauri themed low tops.  Pics to come tomorrow - as unforunately it's been too gloomy today to take any pics of them all completed!

Here's a sneak peek of the rainbow brogues with their first coat of colour on them (before I added all the cute little ice lollies/skulls/milk bottles to them :)

Unfortunately, the photo shoot I was supposed to be styling for last weekend had to be rescheduled. So no pics of that just yet! I'm excited to see my make up idea on the model.