Mini Swirly Bunny How-to

This project is for personal, non-commercial use.

This sweet little project is just in time for your Easter tree. Or you can make a string of garland of mini swirly bunnies for your entry way or add a bunny to the handle of a special someones Easter basket this year.
We are sure once you make one they will keep multiplying like the real thing!

Materials
• 2oz White Polymer clay
• Craft glue
• pink ribbon
• 3/4" eye pins
• pink & white craft paint
• Extra fine crystal glitter or pink glitter
• Glossy varnish
• black 3D paint

Tools
• oven
• toothpick
• ceramic tile



Step 1.
Condition the white clay. In the palm of your hand, roll the clay into a egg shape approximately 1" in size. Place aside.




Step 2.
With another piece of clay roll out a thin snake for the ears of your bunny.



Step 3.
Take about an 1" long piece and form an ear-like loop shape. Create two loops to form the ears of your bunny then blend or smooth the ends into the face of the bunny.

Step 4.
Make a small ball for the tail of you bunny and press it into the end of the bunny.



Step 5.
Using a toothpick make a Y shape in the front of your bunny to indicate his nose and mouth.
You could also make the eyes using the toothpick too.

Step 6.
Take the eye pin and gently insert into the top of your bunny so that just the loop holder is showing. Cut the eye pin to size, so it doesn't stick out the bottom of your bunny. Then place your bunny on the ceramic tile and bake in the oven according to the packaging. (if you don't want to use baking clay, you can also try air-dry clay which could work too)

Step 7.
Once it is baked, let it cool for about 20 minutes or so. Give it a quick sand with fine sand paper.
This makes the paint adhere to the bunny better.



Step 8.
Now you are ready to paint and give your bunny his expression. Put a quick coat of white on your bunny so it is a nice true white.

Using pink paint, give your bunny his nose and cheeks

Don't forget to add some pink into your bunnies ears. Then add black 3D paint for his eyes.
Once the paint dries add two coats of a glossy varnish and let dry.

Step 9.
Now you can add the glitter!
Take some craft glue and put it into a little cup and add a hint of water so the glue won't be too thick. Adding glue and glitter to small parts is easier than adding glue all over.

Step 10.
Take pink ribbon and insert into the eye hole and tie a knot.

That’s it - that is how you make your very own Swirly mini bunny!

How cute is he!!

Have fun... be creative... use your own imagination to create your own herd of bunnies!

You can easily keep embellishing this little bunny with spots or strips or flowers. You can even change the color of the bunny - make it multicolored! The possibilities are endless.
Happy Easter

Coming Up Next:
What's a bunny without his carrot?
We will show you how to make these yummy mini swirly carrots.

Our Spring/Easter 2009 Collection launch

It’s always a crazy time when we launch a new collection here at the studio. We are running around crazy getting the collection created, photographed, uploaded to the site plus adding new website colors and creating and sending out a web mailer.

So on Tuesday the 24th when our collection went live, we got an overwhelming response from our followers. Some designs were sold out by the middle of the day. We can’t express how appreciative we are that our designs are so very well received. It make us feel wonderful that we have fans and collectors who look forward to our new designs each season. It makes all the late nights leading up to the launch well worth it.

There are still a few more of the Spring /Easter designs available (deadline for orders is April 6th). Here are some nice detailed close ups of a few of our designs:















Enjoy your weekend!
~Lianne & Paul

Sneak Peek....

Hello Spring, where have you been? We have been waiting for you to arrive for quite awhile now.

Today is the first day of Spring and we are working away here at the studio adding the final touches to our Spring collection. We hope to have the collection up by the beginning of next week.

Here is a sneak peak from our sketch book of the new collection. We have a nice mix of birds, bunnies and flowers to brighten up you spring time decor. Speaking of decor we are always looking for fun displays and trees to showcase our ornaments along with other pieces we pick for the season (we will post some pictures of our holiday finds in our next post). We have been admiring this egg shape tree from the Bethany Lowe spring collection for awhile and we finally managed to find it at bayberry cove, a great website filled with wonderful artisan licensed artwork for every occasion. It arrived in the mail last week and it is waiting for us to adorn it with our new spring and Easter designs. We think this tree is just eggcellent.

Swirly Studio Update

It seems like every time we look at the calendar we are scrambling to put together another new holiday collection. With the middle of March quickly upon us, which means Easter is just a month away, (April 12th) we thought we would do a post to update everyone on what's happening here at the studio and answer some of the email questions that have been coming in over the weeks that we haven't had a chance to reply to yet. (sorry!)

Homepage Update?
Hopefully we will have the new homepage up before spring.

Are you going to have a 2009 Spring collection?
Yes! We are in full production right now and what we can tell you is that this years will be a very limited collection due to my better half is 8 1/2 months pregnant and her time in the studio right now is limited.

Our tentative launch date will be the week of March 23rd. If you are on our mailing list you will be notified when the collection is launched.

Will you have more how to projects?
We try to work on these how to projects simultaneously with the production of ornaments collection. If we do, it should be a few days after the launch of the collection or a week.

Will you have any St. Patrick's ornaments?
Lately we have been getting a lot of requests for other holiday ornaments. Unfortunately we don't have a St. Patrick's one this year. We did have something last year because Easter fell so close to the holiday. Here is what it looked like before we added glitter and varnished to the ornament.

Which craft shows are you attending in 2009?
The application registration for the crafts shows are starting to come in. We are still trying to figure out what we are going to do. We we think we will be doing some crafts shows this year. How many... we still don't know. We will post as soon as we get accepted to the shows we decide to apply to.

Other than that, our days have been spent sanding, painting and varnishing ornaments...oh and trying to prepare for our new little addition! Life is busy that's for sure.

Happy Spring!

Spring is in the air...NOT so fast

You've gotta love Mother Nature especially if you live in New England area. This weekend we felt like spring was approaching. We had beautiful spring-like weather in the 50 - 60°s and we were finally able to go without jackets. We went for a walk, played catch with the little one and we were very close to even going to the zoo (but didn't think they would be open since it still is technically winter here )
Realizing that when you get weather like this in March in NE you best make the most of it because it could all change like that......well actually like this....


We awoke Monday morning to this... 30° and snow.
Mother Nature your such a tease!

One thing for sure though, whether it's beautiful spring weather or miserable winter weather our son always seem to make the best of the situation.

Enjoy !!


fyi: The pictures of the flowers we actually taken last year around our home in the spring (wishful thinking!) but we just wanted to show these to create a feeling.

A nice little surprise

A cute little package arrived at our studio last week. It was a beautiful assortment of silk screen Greatarrow cards from a talented artist named Vela from little star soup .
She was celebrating her 100th post with a giveaway, and we were chosen to win this prize.

We've been blogging for a while now and it's been great reading all the other blogs out there from talented artists. So it's nice when we they have give aways to celebrate milestones. Maybe when we do our 100th post we'll do some kind of contest...great idea Vela!

Thanks again Vela for the cards, we love them!