A Little Stranger / The Tarantulas / Real x Head / Onell Design presents: Niblette. Ok, so he’s a GID Nibbler in a hot pink hoodie, but as the pretty counterpart to the SDCC release i thought he needed a pretty name 
These Nibblers are really, REALLY, GID and glow like crazy in the dark or under blacklight.
Each GID Nibbler comes with a hot pink hood and specially designed header cards. Vinyl Made in Japan by Real x Head. Cloak Made in UK by A Little Stranger.
They go on sale in the A Little Stranger Shop Wednesday February 1st at 8pm London time (15:00 Eastern, 12:00 Pacific time. if you are unsure what time this is in your country use this time convertor.)
Urban Vinyl Daily have kindly made me featured artist of the month, thank you Ben for the great interview questions! Head on over now to read about how i got into the toy biz, upcoming plans for Cavey, my influences, customs and more…
Christmas Eve at midnight marked the secret release of the Dune Sea II Nibblers over on The Tarantulas webshop. This figure was a a collab between Onell Design x Real x Head x A Little Stranger x The Tarantulas. Vinyl figure made in Japan by Real x Head. Their little cloaks are handmade in the UK by yours truly.
Stay tuned for a special A Little Stranger colourway, available exclusively through the A Little Stranger shop at the end of January. This morning the postman brought a big box of goodies from Chris for a photo shoot, man am i excited about this release! More news soon
Links: The Tarantulas blog / The Tarantulas shop
Bee-Girl in a jar was a private commission and is sold. She is an A Little Stranger original, made from scratch with polymer clay, glass eyes, faux fur and wire, suspended in an antique jar. I have a few more of these beautiful antique jars waiting for little creatures to go inside; working on a smaller face sculpt was fun and had left me eager to explore just how small i can go with these…
Phew! It’s been a crazy few months which has left my online shop a little neglected as things seem to fly out of shows before i can get them up online. So i’ve been putting my free time over Christmas to good use and updated the A Little Stranger Shop.
A great big sort out of all my stock following all the live events and custom shows i’ve done this year has left me with two customs and half a dozen Bunny Brooches to add to the shop! Visit alittlestranger.bigcartel.com for a browse.
Grey Fancy Snow Bunny follows on from my custom 11″ Eeerz The Fancy Snow bunny, for the Eeerz Invasion Tour at Forbidden Planet. He started life as one of the Eeerz white DIY vinyls, onto which i sculpted his face with polymer clay and painted it with acrylics and pastels, and added ‘fluff’ lines to his body. I made his fluffy head and ‘eeerz’ from soft grey faux fur and off-white velvet. Lastly i made him a little black velvet bow tie and fluffy white tail.
Grey Fancy Snow Bunny was a private commission and is now sold.
Imagine if our favourite Japanese characters were real and lived among us? Taxiderm-eevee is a piece of rogue taxidermy, exploring what it would be like if my favourite Pokemon, Eevee, were a real animal that had been captured and preserved for future generations. Imagine what we could learn from this fascinating creature!
Taxiderm-eevee is an original work created for the Beware the Tall Grass show, November 18th at Kidrobot, London. He sold on the night.
Thank you to the guys at Flatties for having me as a part of Codename: Babushka. This is such a great idea for a project and i’m really happy to be a part of it! There’s 15 artists involved in the project (head here to see a list) each artist’s set is then split up, muddled about with the other dolls and put back together at random, so you will receive 5 pieces of original art from 5 different artists! A Set of 5 russian dolls is £140, they also offer a payment plan, details here.
Codename Babushka is designed for the ulitmate blindbox experience and collectors in mind. Russian Dolls have been sent to all the artists below, each artist has a nest of 5 russian dolls starting at 5.5″ and shrinking down to 1.5″. They have been commissioned to create 5 artworks which will fit back inside each other. Once completed and collected up at Flatties HQ we will mix them all up and put them into blindboxes.
I handpainted my wooden dolls with acrylics in thin layers, leaving the woodgrain exposed underneath. They are then sealed with layers of lacquer for protection and shine. Each doll in the set is inspired by a different animal, going up in size: Hamster, rabbit, red panda, lemur, ram.
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.
I am over the moon to be included in Art Passes series 3 by Lunartik! Art passes are pop out wallets for your Oyster Card, Business cards, Travel Card Holders etc. I use mine all the time as a little purse for carrying ID and cash on a night out. Get your A Little Stranger art pass here for £3.
Art Passes series 3 are In the shop now and feature the work from these great artists:
- Lunartik
- Doktor A
- Lou Pimentel
- Pez
- A Little Stranger
- Tortoy
- RWK (Robots will Kill)
- TADO
Monster Stack was a piece of embroidery and felt collage i created from scratch for the project. I started by counting how many stitches i would need to create a piece the correct size for the template, hand embroidering the rainbow background, and stitching on the little felt monsters. Each monster was then given a pair of bead eyes and a teeny stitched on mouth. I finished the piece off with a splattering of tiny heart shaped buttons and an A Little Stranger woven label.
Meet Real x Nibbler – a triple collab between Onell Design, Real x Head & The Tarantulas, with little hoodies made by yours truly in rainbow of colours. The little guys went down a treat at Comic-Con; the hoodied nibblers sold out as soon as they went on sale, and the The Fishtank Castle‘s playset’s too! I had a blast working on these little hoodies, and even more fun hanging out with everyone on the booth -these boys are awesome and a lot of fun to be around!
And for those of you not at Comic-Con, fret not! We still have a few tricks up our sleeves – there will be an online release in Autumn 2011. Keep your eyes on The Tarantulas blog for updates.
Chris hard at work. Note: delicious breakfast bagels were also available, never say Chris dosen’t look after you!
“ooh lookit them all!” (I nicked this image from Chris’s blog)
Fishtank castle! (image pinched from Toysrevil – more images over there!)
It seems everything i’ve been working on recently is top secret, which is awsome for me cos i get to work on fun secret projects like a toy-making super villain, but sucks for you cos i can’t blog about what i’m up to 
After sitting on this for the last few months I’m very happy i can now share it with you! I’ve been working with The Tarantulas on a series of Nibblers, each in a snug little pointy hoodie. Cute, right! Come find them at SDCC to checkout the figures and playset.
The Tarantulas (and me!) will be appearing at SDCC as part of the Global Figure Symposium 2011 (Booth #4937) kindly hosted by Matt Doughty & organized by Datadub. (Exact details / timings TBC)
This Coraline doll is a little project i’ve been doing in my spare time since February, and i’m really pleased to finally have her on my toy shelf all finished. Now i just need to finish customising her mini-me! I had been oohing and ahhing over the Lalaloopsy dolls i’d seen in friends flickr streams, back around Christmas you couldn’t get Lalaloopsy’s over here (I’ve recently started to see them in Toys R Us and Tesco, but they’re so much dearer than in the US) As soon as I saw Mittens Fluff ‘N’ Stuff with her blue hair and button eyes i just had to make a Coraline. So my friend Lauren was kind enough to send me a lalaloopsy doll (and her mini version, so she can have a dolly of herself!) from the US.
I made all her clothes from scratch (you can get the patterns here) and made her hair bows from polymer clay. I didnt’t make the boots (oh how i wish i knew how to make doll shoes!) just painted them yellow to match her raincoat.
Lots of In-progress shots….
Remember my custom Lunatrik Mini Tea, Monster Brew? Here’s some snaps (and a little video) of him on display amongst the other wonderful customs at Pictoplasma. Over 70 custom Mini Tea’s were on display, and the different ideas everyone had come up with for their custom was staggering. The custom cuppa’s are now on their way to the next stop of the Tea Tour, in Vienna. More about the Tea Tour on Lunartik.com. Enjoy!
Update: My pieces for the show are available to buy online here 
I have some work on display at the Meth and Hot Dogs 2 show at the end of the month. These plush Bunnypillars are an idea i’ve been wanting to try out ever since i did my Bunnypillars painting a while back. Each Bunnypillar plush has a handcast, handpainted resin face set onto a plush body. Each Bunnypillar has then been potted in a real plant pot, and finished with faux ‘mud’. Each one is handmade with love in the A Little Stranger studio and features a woven A Little Stranger tag.
The Bunnypillars (available individually for $40 each) and the last two remaining large copies of the prints (11.5″ x 16.5″) will be available to buy at the show.
Meth & Hot Dogs 2 is a celebration of character art in all its forms. The exhibit will bring together a group of artists whose illustrations, plush, custom toys, sculptures and paintings show an appreciation for the demented, cute and strange. M&HD2 opens April 30th at Lift Designer Toys & Gallery in Royal Oak, MI. Check out the complete list of participating artists!
Meth & Hot Dogs 2, Saturday, April 30th | 7-10pm LiFT Designer Toys & Gallery, 228 W. 4th St. Royal Oak, MI, USA
I welcome commissions on a variety of different toy platforms. Please get in touch! hollystanway (at) gmail.com
What happens when you combine Hidden Crumb‘s love for sweet treats and A Little Stranger’s need to create cute plush? Cupcake Pals! Cupcake Pals are a new range of finely crafted cupcake throw pillows. Adorn your bed, your sofa, your office… Wherever you find a Cupcake Pal you’re guaranteed to find a smile.
Meet Oscar, the first collaboration between Hidden Crumbs and A Little Stranger. Limited to only 10 pieces, Oscar is made from the highest quality materials and lovingly handmade by Holly in the A Little Stranger Studio.
Measures a whopping, cuddly-soft 15 Inches x 15 Inches (38cm by 38cm)
Only £39.99 in the Hidden Crumbs shop. There are only a couple left of these little cuties, get them while they last!
This is my piece for The Omi Show, December 11th 2010 at Munky King, 7308 Melrose Ave, LA, CA 90046.
Inspired by those documentaries about all the creepy creature that live way deep down under the sea, the tentacles and muzzle give off an eerie glow when the lights go out, and coupled with the white fur he glows bright cyan and yellow under UV light. From The Deep started life as a blank white monkey Omi, and i used glow-in-the-dark polymer clay, faux fur, acrylic paint and glass eyes to create him as you see him now. The mount-board is solid wood, varnished to a high gloss finish. He comes with a picture hook for hanging on a wall, and a kickstand so he can be displayed on a flat surface or shelf.
Cavey is a plush series from A Little Stranger. Each Cavey is lovingly handmade in the UK.
