Happy New Year!

4 January 2011
For the first post of 2011, I thought it would be nice to look at all things New, and what better new things are there than babies? Not just any babies, of course, but baby mice in particular :) For those of you who visit my Facebook page, you may have seen some of these before, but this is the first time they've been gathered altogether in one cute bundle of fun.

These two baby mice were the first two I made and aren't they just super cute?! I love the one rolling around on her back (what makes one male and one female? Who knows.), and on an impulse, I dug out some old alphabet cube beads I've had for at least ten years, and thus was born (!) the idea of wee baby mice to celebrate the birth of a new baby, with the baby's name spelt out in baby blocks!

The next job was to put the wee mites in nappies - twin baby girl mice here, going for a bit of a crawl. To give you an idea of scale, they are both about an inch long, and just over an inch tall.

And here are the original two, the girl has a blankie, and the wee boy (who looks as though he's had a bit too much milk) has got a tiny teddy bear. (How much do I love what I do?!)

Then when they got all tired out from playing, the sleepy wee mice appeared - I made the blankets from a very thin sheet of clay, cut a small rectangle and then draped it so that it created folds and looked more realistic. The little girl mouse seems to be snoring, and the little boy mouse is sucking his thumb.

When the mice get a bit older, they do like to be creative by drawing and painting! These mice were made as a special commission for Zoe Platt of PiPO. She is a very talented lady who's motto is "Head, Hand and Heart", the motto of the Arts and Crafts Movement. These mice were my mousey interpretation of this motto to reflect Zoe's own passion for paper (PiPO stands for 'paper in paper out', for those who like to win at Trivial Pursuit). And the scissors held by the Hand Mouse do actually work - I found them on eBay sold by Serendipity in Halifax. I made the colouring pencils from polymer clay - a simple bullseye cane which I reduced and cut into short lengths, and only once they were baked did I sharpen the ends to create the point. The drawings they've done are all their own work :)

The spate of baby mice started me thinking about other baby animals, and as I had already made The Mole Family (which I had embellished somewhat in later incarnations which you can see here), Moles seemed like a good place to start. So here are three Baby Moles - the twins (boy and girl) are a little older than their tiny sibling, who is still in nappies.They're not too old for their blankies, though...

And lastly, given that New Year's resolutions will no doubt be at the forefront of everyone's mind, here's a Gym Bunny who can go to the gym instead of you! She even comes with a healthy snack (and you can adopt her from my Folksy shop).

Lots more to follow shortly about the mice, and The Mouse Nativity in particular, in my next newsletter. If you haven't signed up for it yet, you can do so here.

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