Playful Penguins Process, part 2 - the finale

And the penguin saga continues! My last post ended with a couple of pics of the penguin mock-up with the straw and glass. The following picture shows my penguin nestled in the middle of the inner tube. I placed it in the inner tube to estimate how I should shape the penguin's wings, shown here as wire mesh covered with some masking tape.

Here's the penguin with it's first layer of Apoxie Sculpt.

And here is my second attempt at the under structure for the inner tube. My first version was getting too big and too heavy, so I started from scratch for the inner tube. This time I used colored plastic wrap wound over a circle shaped wire.

And here my penguin is getting accustomed to the newly constructed inner tube.

Now my penguin and inner tube are covered with a coat of gesso, ready to be painted. I painted the cup and straw first, since I was anxious to try my epoxy resin for the "liquid' in the glass.

And here he is! Lounging the day away on his brightly polka-dotted inner tube!

Ahhhhh.....he's enjoying his day! :-)

My Playful Penguin hopes you are enjoying your day as much as he is enjoying his!

Missed "Playful Penguin Process, part 1"? click here

Playful Penguin Process, part 1

Here's a peek at how I created my Playful Penguin piece that's lounging on a polka-dotted innertube.

For the inner tube under structure, I used some wire to shape it into a circle. Then, I covered it with some scraps of gripper liner and aluminum foil.

Here's the inner tube under structure, with the penguin's under structure, which is a burned out light bulb. The white material on the bulb is a type of paper mache medium.

After covering the inner tube structure with foil, I covered it with a layer of paper mache medium.

And here is a mock-up of my penguin drinking from a glass with a straw. I used some sculpey clay to shape a mock glass and beak and inserted a wire to form the straw. The sunglasses shown here are the original glasses that I then made into a mold to make sunglasses with resin.

Here's a close-up view of my penguin/straw & glass mock-up. Stay tuned for my next post featuring more work in progress pics along with the finished piece all painted and glazed.

Stop by my facebook fan page album titled "Works in Progress Step by Step" to take a look at other pieces I've worked on. And please don't hesitate to become a fan of my Lilly Bug page. :-)

Buzzing Behind the Scenes, Part 3

You've read, you've waited and now it's finally here, my Buster the Bee sculpture in living color.

I tried to take photos from every imaginable angle. Someday I'd like to make a Buster the Bee video to post on youtube. Right now I don't know enough about how to make a video and where to find copyright free music. I'm thinking the song "Flight of the Bumblebee" would be a good song for my Buster buzzing over the field of flowers.

Buster being busy as a...you got it...busy as bee.

Uh-oh, what happened to his picnic basket and tea set?

Buster decided to do a practice flight without the basket and tea set.

He wanted to make sure he timed his flight correctly to Toby's shell for the surprise party.

There he goes buzz, buzz, buzzing away!

And here he is ready for the party!

My Buster the Bee sculpture measures approximately 23" wide by 16" high by 15" deep. It's kinda difficult to measure a sculpture with flowers poking out in all directions. So how do you like my Buster piece? It's one of my favorites, especially because I love flowers and there is a whole field of flowers to see even in the dead of a Wisconsin winter. My next post will feature pics of Buster in the great outdoors.

Missed any of my Buster series?

Buzzing Behind the Scenes, part 1 (features the beginning stages of the Buster sculpture)

Buzzing Behind the Scenes, part 2 (features some of the details of how I made the picnic basket and tea set)

Buzzing Behind the Scenes, part 2

It's "tea time"! My last blog post featured the beginning stages of my Buster the Bee sculpture. Today, I'm showing how I made Buster's picnic basket and tea set that he's carrying to Toby's shell. Plus, I have a few close-ups of the final wing set for Buster along with a couple of flower shots.

The photo above shows the beginning stages of the picnic basket and tea set. Can you guess, what's what in the photo? The long strip under the teacup is how I made the teacup. I cut it out like that with wire and masking tape and then formed it into the cup with a wire handle shown above. Those two tab things with a hole in each are for the teapot. This is where the wire for the teapot handle will be inserted.

And ta-da! Here's the tea set ready to be painted. It took a long time to get from the first photo to the second. My Dremel tool came in very handy to clean up the surfaces of the tea set, especially for the teacups. I wanted to get the teapot and cups as smooth as I could.

And here's the picnic basket all painted and ready for Buster to fill with all the fixin's for tea time.

And here's the completed tea set and basket. I was very happy with how the teapot, teacups and picnic basket turned out. I wanted the tea set to look like a real little set of cups with matching teapot. I was anxiously awaiting for the time when I could attach the handle to the teapot to finish it off. I also waited in anticipation for the glaze to go on to make it look shiny.

And can you guess what these are? Yes, Buster's wings that took blood, sweat and tears to make. Okay, not quite, but they were one of the most challenging pieces to make.

I could not wait until I could attach this set of wings to Buster, but I had to wait until Buster was all painted before attaching them. And, yes you will have to wait too...until my next post when I feature the finished Buster piece all painted and put together. I had so much fun making this piece and it was challenging and exciting to wait and see how it all came together. Before I end today's post, I'd like to share with you a couple of close-up shots of a couple of flowers from my Buster sculpture.

This little ladybug was visiting one of the coneflowers for the Buster sculpture. It was real late at nite and when I walked into my work room to turn off the lamp and check on my work, here was this lil' beetle walking along the petals. Oh my, could that be the real life Lilly the Ladybug visiting one of Buster's flowers? Needless to say I had to capture this Lilly moment on film, um...digital film.

And here's the inside of one of the Poppy flowers for the piece. I am a fan of Poppy flowers so I had to include some of them on this piece. Well, that's all for now. Keep your eyes open for my next post that will be bursting with colorful flowers and Buster toting his teaset and basket to the party.

Visit my website Lilly Bug Studio, to find out more about Lilly the Ladybug and her friends!

Buzzing Behind the Scenes, part 1

I've wanted to blog about my Buster the Bee watercolor and sculpture for quite some time. And here it is! My Buster pieces have been one of my favorites in my storybook line.

This is my watercolor with Buster the Bee delivering some honey tea with Oliver the Ant guiding him to Toby's turtle shell. Ever since I started making my storybook sculptures, I've wanted to make this watercolor into a sculpture. Last year I had a small art exhibit at a gallary inside of a local public library. I wanted to make this piece for last year's show. With lots of patience and determination, I got this piece done for the show. There are a lot of parts to this sculpture, so this will be the first installment in a four part series.

Here is my sculpture about midway into sculpting it. I love flowers and I was excited to make a field of flowers for Buster to buzz over. I got some books about flowers from the library to find a variety of flowers to sculpt.

The photo above shows some of the leaves and flowers for my piece.

And here are the meticulous wings for Buster. I painstakingly glued each piece of wire to form the wings. And needless to say it was with much trial and error. The following photo attests to the fact, that these wings were not made in a day or two.

A selection of trial and error wings, which I will not depart with. These wings are part of my "mistake/reject" collection. Am I a pack rat? Keeping my mistake pieces can be a helpful guide for the future. Although, if I'd make another bee sculpture, I would try to find a new way to make the wings. They were one of the hardest parts to make along with being the most delicate to handle.

And here's the final photo for part one. Buster is already flying (albeit wingless) amongst the flowers waiting to be painted. The next part of this series will feature some of the smaller details of my piece, such as the picinic basket and tea pot, Buster will be carrying to Toby's shell. Stay tuned, for part 2 of Buzzing Behind the Scenes.

Turtles & Pizza!!!

Yesterday, a good friend of mine, Hannah, and I went on a bike ride on the nature trail and we spotted some adorable turtles during our visit. I thought I would write a turtle themed post today. The pic above shows one of my watercolors for my storybook idea. It's Toby the Turtle and his friends around his shell.

And here is Toby in 3-D form, made with Apoxie Sculpt & acrylics. This sculpture is the largest one I've made, it measures approximately 20 inches long.

And lookee here, this was the second turtle that I ever saw on the trail. I saw this one last summer and my first one the summer before. I get so excited when I see turtles on the trail and turtle sightings are rare.

This is my favorite turtle pic from all of my turtle sightings.

This turtle was one of the turtles that we saw yesterday. We think she was trying to lay eggs in what looked like a chipmunk hole. She was about 5" long. I thought my friend Hannah was teasing me when she said, "There's a turtle laying eggs." When we first started our bike ride I said, "I want to see a turtle on this ride," thinking it probably would not happen. Then we see a turtle. I asked Hannah what else we should say we wanted to see while on the trail and see if we would see it. She said she wanted to see a fawn. And awhile later we saw a deer jump a few yards ahead of us on the trail. We thought it was so strange. I said I'd like to see a crane, but no luck. However, we did see a cat and it starts with a "C" like crane. Lol! I also mentioned that maybe we should say we wanted to see money fall from the sky, but that didn't happen either. Bummer!

On our way back on the trail we saw the same turtle and then just a short way from there we saw this little fella, maybe they are a turtle couple. Awwwww!

And ta-da, here's our yumm-a-licious pizza we made before our bike ride. I found the recipe here. It's a Red Pepper and Eggplant pizza and it's scrumptous. And really there's so many good veggies on it that you really don't need to put cheese on it. Can you imagine, that me a cheese-lover would say that? Take a look at the pic at the recipe site and then compare with ours photographed above, pretty close to the recipe's pic, wouldn't ya say? We didn't have the fresh basil for ours so there isn't the lovely green basil in our photo.

Talk to you later. :-)

Frankie the Frog in Living Color!

Hello Everyone! It's me Frankie. And I'm here to share with you how I look in living color. Have any of you experienced what it's like to go from 2-D to 3-D and from a gray color to vivid color? It is quite an experience to go through all of those changes. The best and most exciting part is going from gray to color and Christine will tell you that it is the most magical part of the process. It's like a whole new life begins once the first glimpse of color touches the nuetral colored surface. After working hours and days on a gray looking piece, Christine forgets about the end result and sometimes wonders if she will like the piece once it is painted. Other times she anxiously awaits the time to add color because she knows how the color adds life and character to the piece.



I am proud to say that Strings the Cricket and I were the first two sculptures that Christine made with Apoxie Sculpt. And that we were chosen to be in the Spring Honors Show while Christine was in college. One day while cleaning up after sculpture class, Christine's sculpture teacher, TC, asked her if she'd like her pieces in the honors show. It was a goal, a secret dream of hers to be in the honors show before graduating and it happened one semester before graduating. Yay! She remembers all of those past classes where teachers would select other's work for the show and now this time something of hers was chosen.






There we were, in an enclosed display case, surrounded by other pieces of artwork selected for the show. We proudly stood there playing our instruments in honor of the show.





If you're interested in learning more about Apoxie Sculpt, you can go to the Aves Studio website to see their products.


To see Frankie the Frog transform from 2-D to 3-D click here.