Lion and Tiger (b.7 December 2009)

Grrrrrrr....Thanks to Donna who commissioned these Wild Beasties from me at the Bruntcliffe School Christmas Fayre on 22 November! It was a lot of fun departing from my usual cat style, and I'm very pleased with the way these have turned out. They will definitely be joining the Wild Beasties range in the near future!

The Tiger came first - to begin with, I mixed up orange, black and a small bit of white, and then lightly mixed the colours to create a defined stripey effect. The features were pretty straightforward - the rounded ears with white inner fluff, the slightly larger chops and nose, all finished off with a large, rounded tail. He stands about 4cm tall. Since making him, I've tried out a few more colour mixes but haven't been happy with the results. I suspect I'll need to be satisfied with the more stylised interpretation of a tiger, rather than realism (that would be in keeping with what has gone before...Rainbow Cats, anyone?!)

Slightly more challenging was the Lion. I started by mixing up a golden yellow colour for the body (bright yellow mixed with ivory, a touch of sweet potato and some white). The features were also quite straightforward and were similar to the Tiger's. The part which did cause me some pause for thought was the mane.

I had all sorts of ideas to begin with, and was initially going to dry felt some wool into a mane shape and then attach it with liquid polymer clay. Then, when I was in town the other day, I went to Samuel Taylor's (fantastic haberdashery shop) and found some brown feather trim which I thought could work very well. Alas, when the time came to apply it, the fluff was so thick that it virtually obscured the entirety of the Lion. Trimming it down helped to a certain extent, but my experience with trimmed feather trim was much the same as it was with trimming the black pom-pom for Bearskin Cat. It went EVERYWHERE. In the end, I went with extruded clay and then built up the mane strand by pain-staking strand. And I think the finished effect works pretty well, although I'll work more on getting a layer of clay under the strands to speed up the 'maning' process!

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