Don’t Forget Your Mittens is my piece for the Icons show at Fullcircle, Leeds, on October 28th 2011. She started life as a 1000% Bearbrick, i sculpted her face from scratch using polymer clay and glass eyes. I then painted her face with chalk pastels, acrylics and matt lacquer before sealing her lips with a few coats of gloss varnish and adding real human hair. Her bear suit was made from scratch in a soft caramel teddy bear style fabric, with fleece trims and a giant zipper in front. I then added the finishing touch of her little knitted mittens on a string through her bear suit.
I had a great time working on this custom, i think its my favourite piece i’ve worked on to date! Although slightly daunting at first i thoroughly enjoyed working at this massive scale – she’s the size of a toddler, and currently resides in our living room while she waits to be shipped up to Leeds for the show, creeping out everyone who comes over.
The line up for the show is insane and i’m humbled to be in the midst of such a fantastic selection of artists. You can see a work-in-progress shot of Map Map’s uh-mazing custom over on the Hang Gang site.
Baby Kraken started life as a 9″ white vinylmation Mickey Mouse vinyl. The skull is made from Mickey’s head with just a little light sculpting and teeth added, and a drilled hole for his gold pirates hoop 
I kept one of the figures hands and glued into it an arm bone i’d sculpted from sculpey. Both the skull and the arm were painted with acrylics and given a good grubby-ing up before being sealed with matt lacquer and dusted with ‘moss’.
The head of the Kraken is simply a plush skin i made to fit the upturned body from the figure. His tentacles keep their shape via a metal armature I bent into appropriately wiggly, tentacele-y positions before fixing the armature into the inside of the hard vinyl head. He has real glass eyes, and his tentacles decorated with hundreds of ‘warts’. Then i went to town fixing on coins, jewels and crystals all over his tentacles.
In the darkest depths of the briny deep,
See the baby Kraken scuttle and creep.
The floor awash with coins and treasure,
a vast amount by any measure.
The spilled contents of a treasure chest,
a bounty from an ill-fated pirates quest.
It’s collector’s bones lay decayed and forgotten,
amidst ships boards, ragged and rotten.
The baby Kraken passes over jewels blue and red,
that stick to his glistening tentacles and head.
