Art Bunny Blog - The Art Bunny

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

6/12/2023

IT'S CHRISTMAAAAAS!!! Well almost, so I made some cute little Christmas craft bits to sell at Brew Corner in Wrexham and Haven Cafe in Llandudno. It was a good excuse to use up a bunch of old craft stuff I had lying around and it was nice to just have some fun and be creative for a few days. The rockabilly robin magnets are definitely my favourite and I think I might make some other types of bird magnets in this style too. I also had a bit of fun doing a fancy photo shoot for them!

Roll on Christmas!

Cakes,cakes,cakes!

11/1/2018

The new year was book-ended by a lot of cake! Below is a quick rundown of each one and there are more photos of each cake on my Cakes page.

This was one of my Christmas cakes. I wanted to do something cute this year, and what's cuter than little round robins in woolly hats! The little robin's yellow and orange hat was inspired by Jane's hat from Firefly, which is just a really fantastic hat!

This cake was supposed to have a Christmas tree on it with little presents but I forgot to buy green icing! However I had an abundance of white icing so I decided to go with snowmen instead. I love these two little guys; they're so adorable! I love how simple and innocent this cake looks too. It's just two little snowy friends showing how much they care for each other. A lovely Christmas moment.

This was a 21st birthday cake with a Real Madrid theme. I'm not really a football fan but I do like how the football pattern on this turned out.

I really loved making this cake. Unicorn cakes are really popular at the moment and I have actually wanted to try my hand at one for a while. I enjoyed doing the piping work on this. I haven't done a lot of piping work other than on cupcakes and it was nice to do something different. It was also my first time using gold food paint and I really like how it looks. Other than the fact I knocked over the tub full of little gold balls which went everywhere this cake was a pleasure to make. This was my first cake of 2018 and was a nice pretty way to start the year.

Now this cake was a fun challenge. When I first saw photos of other champagne bucket cakes I just couldn't figure how I was going to make one. I knew a real champagne bottle wouldn't work as it would be too heavy. In the end I decided to carve the bottle out of polystyrene as it's very light. I designed a label on my computer to try and make it look as much like a champagne bottle as possible, and used the gold wrapping from Ferrero Roche for the top (which I think was a little stroke of genius!). I'm pretty proud of this cake, and it was fun to do something so different.

Christmas banner 2017!

4/12/2017

The festive season is upon us and so is this year's Art Bunny Christmas banner! Artemis and Sadie have teamed up to help wrap some special Christmas presents - although it looks like they've got themselves into a bit of a mess!

I'm back!

6/6/2017

It's been a while! I've taken a little break from art these past few months to put together my new art room. It's been quite a project and as usual took longer than I thought it would because I can't help but be picky! It's finished now though and is all flowery and twinkly and ready for some creative magic!

Here is the first painting painted in my new room. It's a copy of another painting that someone asked me to do for them. The original painting was done in oils and was really beautiful. I did this one in acrylics and I think it's a pretty good copy.

Three Swallows - A2 acrylic on canvas

Although I haven't been creating much in the way of art I have made a few cakes. First there were my two Christmas cakes which were a bit simpler this year as we went away for Christmas and they needed to travel. Then I made a cake featuring a Mini for a birthday. I'm pretty proud of my Mini cake. The inside of the Mini is made from polystyrene to keep it light and keep a more solid shape.

You can see more photos of these on my Cakes page. Now it's time to get back to art!

Last Christmas . . .

13/1/2017

Well Happy New Year everyone! It's been a while since I updated this blog so I thought I best get back to it! I created some new favourite things over the Christmas period, but the one I'm most proud of is the painting below of my sister's pony Rosie. Isn't she beautiful! I painted it as a Christmas present, and although the finished painting looks almost nothing like the original idea I started with I still love it to bits.
Rosie looks like a real life My Little Pony so I decided to do a mix of realism and fantasy to try and capture that. Her mane is full of different colours and it was lots of fun to paint. The background is somewhat of a fantasy forest scape, with wind and sunbeams, although it could also be a beach or a country lane at sunset. It's whatever your mind can see!

Rosie - A2 ACRYLIC ON CANVAS

I also did another horse portrait for Christmas that went all the way to Texas. This one was in coloured pencil and was actually quite challenging. I always find that with short haired animals, where it's more about shine than texture, you have to be a lot more accurate with shading and highlights. This piece was also a challenge because my dark brown pencil is now less than an inch long and rather tricky to colour with! I do love this portrait though, particularly the hints of chestnut that show through.

American Horse - A3 colored pencil portrait

I also did some customary cat and dog portraits for Christmas. Below are Loulou, Jessie, Sam and Frankie. All are coloured pencil portraits and I'm very proud of each of them.

Say hello to my Winter Ladies!

4/10/2016

My favourite new addition to my Christmas craft collection are my Winter Ladies. Five pairs of adorable
Christmas tree decorations, each one with a name, a unique personality and a special talent. I didn't start out making smart and accomplished miniature women but that's what they became. So say hello to my Winter Ladies!

Amy is a florist who specialises in creating beautiful arrangements out of varieties of heather, many of which she grows herself. Matilda tends a small herd of goats and makes her own goat's milk cheese. She has won awards for her cranberry variety. They have been best friends since girlhood and enjoy meeting over cake and tea.

Eleanor is an avid knitter and crochet extraordinaire. She enjoys knitting tiny waistcoats for the neighbourhood cats. Phoebe is a daydreamer and writes children's books set in magical faraway lands about fairies and dragons and giants. They both met through their mutual love of nature and regularly take woodland walks together.

Esther makes award winning jams and marmalades from fruit she grows in her garden. She also makes very good scones to go with them. Daphne is an accomplished violinist and most enjoys playing traditional folk music. She sometimes plays with a small group called The Forest Folk. These two have been friends their whole lives and regularly find themselves in uncontrollable fits of giggles.

Florence is a gifted tennis player with an indefensible backhand, and although she never went pro she has tangled with the best of them. Katy is a sculptor who is inspired by the ocean and seaside landscape near her home. She works primarily in clay but also incorporates found items such as shells and driftwood. They met at a salsa dancing class and became firm friends.

Myrtle is a landscape painter who works mostly in water colours. She particularly enjoys painting rainy days and dramatic landscapes. Ava makes kites out of paper and bamboo and takes them to festivals the world over. Her favourite one is shaped like a windmill complete with rotating blades. These two have been friends since they were little girls and enjoy many happy evenings playing board games and cards.

They are all for sale on my Etsy page whilst stocks last!

Art Bunny Christmas 2015

21/1/2016

Phew! This past Christmas was certainly a busy one! I had lots of portrait orders, several of which were for overseas, which is always exciting. Also there was my annual Christmas baking bonanza, which as always was yummy!

Pet Portraits

Here is a selection of some of my favourite portraits that I created over Christmas 2015. My most popular medium was definitely colour pencil this year, and it was fun to do my first pug!

My absolute favourite portrait from Christmas, and now one of my all time favourites, is this black and white acrylic on canvas of Tilly the Westie. I've never done a portrait in black and white before and it was a lot of fun. I also enjoyed the challenge of trying to capture the blurred background as was in the original photo. I think I did a pretty good job. Definitely love this painting!

Tilly - A3 acrylic on canvas

You can see the other portraits I did on my Pets/Animals page.

Cake

As always I made two Christmas cakes to make sure there is plenty to go around. As I was a bit pushed for time this year I decided to go for some simpler designs. I made two snowmen; one had the traditional coal eyes and carrot nose, the other was an arts and craft snowman with a cotton reel for a nose and stitches and buttons and ribbons.

I also made this Michael Kors handbag cake for a relative's birthday. It had silver balls and edible glitter, and though I was pretty much making it up as I went I think it turned out looking rather good.

(I think there were more of those silver balls on my kitchen floor than on the cake by the time I'd finished)

You can see more photos of my cakes on my
Cakes page.

Baubles

I did really well in the bauble department this Christmas. My music baubles proved really popular, and my Star Wars baubles sold out in a few days! Plus, of course, my annual shipment of doggy baubles made it's way to Christmas trees around the country. Here are a selection of some of my favourites.

So it was a very productive Christmas for me this time, and though I was very glad to be busy, I was sure grateful for the rest after it was over! Bring on Christmas 2016!

These are the baubles you're looking for . . .

24/11/2015

Seeing as how the new Star Wars film is coming out this Christmas, and because Star Wars is AWESOME, I decided to make some Star Wars baubles. I started off with Chewbacca because I have a mountain of furry material at my disposal. Then I added Obi Wan because Jedi's are central to Star Wars, and finally Darth Vader to help bring balance to force. I only made three sets of three as I've got a lot of commissions on the go this Christmas but if these sell well I will definitely be making more next year!

A little Christmas Angel

24/11/2015

This year there is going to be an angel trail around Wrexham town centre. Handmade angels will be placed in shop and cafe windows for people to find.

There will be 20 angels in all and I decided to help by making one too! I'm told a group of children will be naming the angels and I will let you know what they name mine. If it were up to me I would name her Hope.

When the trail starts on 1st December I will go and take a photo of her in her spot.

Here is my angel; isn't she beautiful!

If music be the food of love . . . then these baubles must be yummy!

5/11/2015

Remember that bag of mysterious balls? Well this is what they became!

Every Christmas I end up with a pile of spare baubles because the matt baubles I buy to do doggy portraits on always come in sets with shiny baubles that don't take to being to painted. So this year I decided to do something with them and this is what I came up with!

I don't know about you but I think they're rather pretty!

You can buy these baubles in boxes of six on the Art Bunny Etsy shop page here.