Happy Anniversary to the Happy Couple

Hello World!

Today marks the wedding anniversary for three different couples that have all played a significant part in my life. Today is also the day that this wedding cake topper turns 1 year old. :P Since I wasn't able to upload this cake topper last year... I decided to wait an entire year before I posted about it. 

For this wedding cake topper, the bride requested for her to be knitting -- a past-time that she is well known for and one that she enjoys. And for the groom, I was challenged to make him into Ironman.

First, the bride:

After making my base figure and adding the general colors and shapes, the fun part was in the details. The top of the dress was fairly similar to previous pieces that I made before, and it consisted of placing small oval circles onto the top of the dress, then pressing them with a pointed tip to achieve the more 3D leaf appearance.

Next came the hands and the knitted piece. I haven't made pieces with hands before, so I wasn't sure how I wanted to make them. The flat, rounded hands kinda came about for no particular reason. Haha. XD But that's usually how art works. :P The knitted piece was actually really easy to make. After Youtubing it, I realized I could just take two twisted pieces of clay, twist them in the opposite direction, and put them together to make the pattern. I also made the needles out of clay when, in retrospect, it may have been easier just to take some needle pins or eye pins... But I digress...

Finally, the hair. You may have noticed that there is more hair on this picture above, compared to the image of the bride before her facial details were added. After sending a picture of the finalized figurines to the bride and groom, we decided that I didn't add enough hair, which made them both look like they had receding hairlines which, for obvious reasons, was not what I was going for. Haha. This is why it's always important to have a second opinion and to ask for evaluations.

For the hair, I placed larger pieces of clay on the head to give the hair the correct shape, then added the details by carving them with a pointed tool. There was only one large braid that I literally braided out of clay, and the other parts I just carved it to give it a "braided" look. The final details were small golden leaves and pearl drops, which were a part of the hairpieces that the bride used on her wedding day. I had a picture of her hair (from her hair appointment) to use as reference, and I also made the actual hairpiece, so I had a pretty good idea as to what it would/should look like in her hair.

And now we come to the challenge of turning the groom into Ironman. 

I spent a really long time (probably longer than I wish to admit) looking up images of Ironman... and there were SO. MANY. VERSIONS. And yes, I'm aware that there is a plethora of Ironman suits... which is what made my job so difficult. Haha. In the end, I had to look for a very, very simple version because.... let's face it, making a suit of armor out of clay is no easy task.

What I ended up doing was, I sketched/carved out an outline of the armor onto the body of the figurine. Then I would take a flat piece of red clay and cut out each piece, one by one, and then attach it to the body. The reason for doing this was because I wanted deep grooves in between each of the pieces of armor to make it appear like it was a suit that was put together piece by piece. It was also easier to focus on one piece at a time. If I covered the entire thing in red clay and then carved it out, I wouldn't have been able to get such crisp and sharp divides between each piece.

After adding each red piece one by one, I added in the yellow/gold pieces in the end.

Probably the more challenging aspect of this piece was the fact that the groom wore glasses. I had a difficult time figuring out how I would put glasses on his face without making him look like an old man wearing tiny glasses on his face. But... my first attempt did exactly that. Hahaha. XD

I kinda just added the facial details and the glasses... got frustrated with it... and just left it alone for a bit. I figured something would come to me by the time I finished adding the other details. The last bit for the armor was the arms. One of the reasons why I decided to add arms to this wedding cake topper (since my previous ones did not have them) was because I felt like the armor had less detail without the arms. Any part of the suit that had a yellow/gold element made it look more authentic -- well, at least in my opinion it did.

In the end, I scraped off the tiny, old man glasses and made large, 3D versions out of wire, and eventually glued it to his face after baking the entire piece.

And, again... after confirming with the bride and groom, we decided a receding hairline should not be a part of the wedding cake topper. :P

And, there you have it! The rest of the details were the easy parts: a knitted heart, flower petals and additional accessories.

Finished product!

View from behind

Closeup of the bride

Closeup of the groom

I added some white to his eyes to make it pop and look more lifelike

And that's it! This was my... fourth wedding cake topper? Probably the most detail-oriented groom I've yet to make, but it was a lot of fun to make, even if I grew crosseyed staring at the small crevices between the armor pieces... WORTH IT. Hahaha. XD

My final thoughts are... I'll never figure out a way to make these clay figurines free of dust. I just need to set up an office in a dust-free lab... I was getting dust into it, even as I rolled out the clay and added heat to it by rolling it between my palms... so there was no way the end product was going to be dust free. :( Or maybe I'm just dusty and dirty. :( Haha. 

In other news... I'm in the process of setting up a new blog! After using Blogspot for a bit.... I've decided that I'm not a huge fan of the layout for this website. While this blog will remain online, and all my posts will still be here, I'll be posting new, craft-related posts on a new blog... coming soon! So... hopefully people will still read my blogposts. Hahaha. XD

Until then... Happy Anniversary (to this knitting and Ironman couple, as well as to the two other couples I know), Merry Christmas... and Happy New Year! 

As always, thanks for reading!

:)