Desk of the Day - 09/02/14 Making uni work as kawaii as possible

Today I'm working on my tech file. Along side our projects at uni we're supposed to create a file full of techniques and things we've learned during our classes. Right now I'm working on some pages introducing all the machines we use to make shoes and what they do. As you can guess, it gets a little boring just typing up notes so I couldn't resist making the machines into little kawaii monsters! They're not all as friendly as they look & can be dangerous, but they're pretty helpful when it comes to making shoes.

More of my uni projects // More Desk of the Day posts 

Wednesday Art Feature: Emma Kidd

Emma Kidd is a multi talented artist based in Australia. She specialises in photography, illustration and print making. I'm particularly fond of Emma's illustrations. She obviously has a very imaginitive and creative brain and I love to see the monsters and creatures she comes up with.

[Website] [Etsy] [Facebook] [Twitter]

New York memories

It's been almost two weeks since I got back from New York and I'm still pining to go back. I've also only just unpacked my souvenirs - how lazy am I? I wanted to share with you my cute little finds, I think i've been pretty good at not buying clothes (mainly because Ash would probably have had a big tantrum if I'd decided to go clothes shopping as well as dragging him to a ton of vegan places).

Firstly is my signed Alex Pardee print. I bought this from The Cotton Candy Machine - which is a store I've always wanted to go to. It's in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and stocks a ton of my favourite artists such as Miss Van, Jon Burgerman, Tara McPherson and many many more. If you're every in Williamsburg I recommend you give this shop a visit. Not only is the guy who runs it knowledgeable about the art, he's really enthusiastic and ended up doing dramatic readings (from memory) about Alex Pardee's zero friends t-shirts. We were really impressed and Ash ended up buying a zero friends smurf t-shirt too.

Next is my beloved mammoth figure which I got from The Evolution Store. I loved this store. I'm aware, as a vegan, taxidermy should probably gross me out but I have a weird interest in it. It's full of skulls, taxidermy, faux taxidermy, fake brains and lots of fun things. It's like a museum in a shop. When I saw the Anotomical kits I got so excited. I wanted so many of them, especially the dinosaur ones. But I couldn't justify the $129 for a dinosaur that was only slightly bigger than the $38 figures.  So I brought home this mammoth instead. He's gonna look so cute on my desk in my studio!

I also bought a cute cat from China town. I've always wanted one that wagged it's paw, and this one is solar powered and so cute!

I bought some cute decorations for my Christmas tree too! These will always remind me of my awesome holiday in New York.

Wednesday Art Feature: The Forgotten Friends

You can't just look at The Forgotten Friends's work and forget about it. If you like creepy bunnies and gross monsters then this is definitely up your street! The Forgotten Friends uses wire, resin clay, fake fur, silicone and lots of other stuff to create these monstrous creatures.

The forgotten friends now has an Etsy Shop so you can buy your very own creepy monster!
Check out their deviantart for more creepy little dudes.

Wednesday Art Feature: Ballrig

I've always loved seeing peoples work in progress and sketchbook work. I think that is one of the reasons I'm so fond of Ballrig's work. He often posts amazing sketches and work in progress shots on his Tumblr and his Deviantart.

Ballrig is a ridiculously talented artists from Australia. I'm always very jealous of his ability to draw faces and expressions with such character.

Etsy Shop Feature: Horrible Sweet

This morning, I stumbled across a combination of my favouritest things; awesome etsy shops and monster sculptures.

Horrible Sweet is an etsy shop that sells the work of Lydia Dekker, an artist from the Netherlands.
Her creations, in my opinion, couldn't possibly be more perfect. The combination of creepy and cute combined with pastel colours and shit loads of awesome eyes.

Unfortunately, I can't afford to cover my house in her monstrous cuties just yet, so I'll have to settle for stalking her website and blog instead.

Wednesday Art Feature: Venetta

I first saw this artists work about a year ago on Deviant Art. She's become one of my favourite artists and I am always excited when she submits more monsterous illustrations!

Venetta is based in the US and has an awesome imagination. She's mainly known for her digital art but she's also pretty kick ass at printmaking, painting, watercolours, crafting and photography.
 

Venetta has recently set up a website for the creatures she creates, called "The Rowdies". You can also like them on facebook.

If you want to check out more of Venetta's awesome work have a look at her DeviantArt and Tumblr.

Wednesday Art feature: Nekranea

I'm going to try and post a new art or craft feature each Wednesday from now on.
I thought i'd start off with a completely inspiring and talented artist named Nekranea.
I first stumbled upon her DeviantArt account a few months ago and immediately fell in love with the creatures she makes.

Nekranea is a spanish artist, she specialises in one of a kind art dolls made from polymer clay (painted with acrylics) and needle felting. She displays her work beautifully in woodland scenes, making them look like real creatures.

Nekranea is not just a talented doll maker, she is also a great illustrator and has a shop where you can purchase prints, clothing, decorations and lots of other things featuring her artwork.

 

If you want to see more work by Nekranea check out her personal website, shop, Deviant Art and blog.

A Monsteriffic Birthday!

Over the weekend me and Ash (my boyfriend) celebrated our birthdays. My friend Ginge made us a cake (she named it the diabetes dreamcake). It was a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercreme, covered in jelly beans, jelly sweets, chocolate buttons and all sorts. Very yummy!!

I wrapped Ashes presents in monster wrapping paper and modified his monster card using my Molotow paint pens.

Ash got me some amazing presents! Including some Jeremy Scott Adidas trainers that i've been obsessing about for ages now! 

I think my favourite present he got me has to be my Love & a Sandwich Giant Monstropus!! He is 1 1/2 feet tall, 2 1/2 feet across. I named him tiddles :)


Here he is with his other monster friends:

The adorable monster Iphone case is from Tomo Ltd another one of my favourite etsy shops, check it out!
And the monster russian dolls and cap are by PonyChops of course :)

Yeti Love!!

I'm pretty much obsessed with Yeti's at the moment. I've been working on a load of yeti related items for the PonyChops shop. I'm also working on some baseball caps which will be available pretty soon :) and some short shorts!
Here's the new yeti stuff, the Russian Dolls are £45 a set and the shoes are £60:

I've also been browsing etsy for all things yeti related. There's some pretty kick ass stuff out there!!

Here are my top 8 etsy Yetis:

1. Hand Sculpted mini Monster $18 by Happy Moon Belly

2. Yeti Salt and Pepper Shakers $68 by Red and Main

3. Yeti Button Set $4 by Scientific Culture

4. Finger Puppet Greetings Card $3.25 by Dear Deer Designs

5. Articulated Paper Dolls $21 by Dubrovskaya

6. Soft Furry Creature $25 by Kriture Art

7. Stationary Set $11 by Five Families Paperie

8. Yeti Necklace $11 by Tomo Ltd

Valentines day!

Happy Day after Valentines everyone! Hope you all had a lovely day.
I certainly did, I arrived home to a beautiful bunch of flowers, and had tea cooked for me! Yummy steak!!
I made Ash some home made salted caramel chocolates and some brownie and white chocolate hearts. They were yum! I will try and post a recipe for the caramels really soon!! I was quite proud of myself making caramel (I LOATHE making it, it never turns out the consistency I want and I'm almost always too greedy and end up burning myself while trying to taste it too early).

Here's a piccy of the inside of the card that i'd painted for him. It was just a quick painting so it's not very well polished, but I love the idea. I'm actually basing some Russian Dolls on these at the moment!! And I'm thinking of maybe doing a card design of a much neater/better drawn out version of it.

Etsy Finds

I've discovered a couple of new shops on etsy today that I feel are worth a mention. The first, of course, is monster related.

I just adore these little monster ipod cases by Tomo Ltd (they have a blog too). They're only $20 each.

My second discovery of the day is Weasel Factory (facebook page). Their jewellery is really original and fun, I would buy every item in their store if I could! They're REALLY decently priced too.
Here's some of my Weasel Factory favs:

Chef Matryoshka

I think I spelled Matryoshka right this time?? I'm not allowing myself to be lazy and google the spelling anymore. 


Some Chef monster matr.... Russian Dolls. For sale here :)

Monster Bows Matryoshka

It feels like I have written the word matryoshka about a million times by now, why do I still have to google the correct spelling???


These little Monsters are for sale here.

Molotow Markers!

I'd like to introduce you to Roary, my new monster. My wonderful boyfriend got him for me for Christmas, he didn't really have much of a choice though, I've been unsubtly hinting to him for months that I NEED a Love & a Sandwich monster.

Roary is currently sat on my desk in my Pony Chops office. I've given him the job of protecting my Molotow Markers (which I also got for Christmas).

I first heard of Molotow Markers a few months ago, and have been dying to get my hands on some since then. The ink they use is a hybrid, acrylic based paint which is very highly pigmented (they actually draw straight onto black objects and show up really well!!). They are very popular amongst graffiti artists.

Due to the acrylic based ink, they're perfect for painting/drawing on almost anything. So far I've used them on plastic, wood, leather and on top of other acrylic paints, and have been incredibly impressed with the results. I wouldn't recommend them for fabric and canvas shoes though, as although the ink is high pigmented, it is quite runny so I could see it bleeding on fabric.

Having in the past bought paint pens and markers which would clog and dry up within a few minutes of use, I was initially a bit dubious about how well the ink would flow through the nib.

However, I have had no problems with the flow of these pens, they're really fluid to use, just like a good quality felt tip.

They have a selection of nib sizes, mine are a 2mm nib. Although you can buy 1mm changeable nibs for them too. They are also refillable. I haven't needed to refill mine yet but I've heard they're pretty easy to refill.

In conclusion, I absolutely love these pens!! I can see so many uses for them, and I fully intend to invest in the complete kit as soon as possible.