Christmas gifts

I never thought I would make it this year

On the 20;th december, I still wasnt done with all the figurines, and non of them were painted

On tuesday, wednesday and thursday I sat from 10 in the morning to 4 in the night, sculpting and painting, only taking breaks to go out with Arrami (my dog). I barely had time to sleep, but on thursday evening (well, accually 5am friday ) I still wasnt finished with all of them

But I just had to finish them, and finaly, on friday evening, only one day befor christmas, I was finished

I wanted to post pics of them already on friday, but I had so much to do, and then it was christmas eve, and then I was working, so I havent had time to post the pics until now.

But here they are, the seven christmas figurines for my family
(This year, I went a little more comic on some of the figurines )

For my big brother, the mechanic, some kind of confused lizzard
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For my biggest little brother, the electrician, some kind of mustelid, with sunglasses and a lightbulb
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For my other little brother, who rather party than do homework, a party panda
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For my smalest little brother, who loves to play video games (I accually glued a pic of the acual game he use to play on the tv)
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For my mums boyfriend, who works as a nightguard at a company called Securitas (the three red dots are their logo), a watching owl
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For my mum, her crazy old papillon, Max (he always have the tongue out, since he doesnt have any teeth left there )
(you see those longer hairs on the tail, belly, ears legs ets... I had to put them there one by one! It took forever!)
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And lastly, for my dad, who fought hard to get the locals to accept a wild wolf that had wandered down here (the first wolf down here in småland for over 140 years). She sadly got killed about a month ago, as the sheep-owners refused to accept wolfs to live here.
So I gave him a different ending, were the wolf won. (the hunter is not dead, just very drunk )
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Wow! You sure were creative and what WONDERFUL creatures you made for your family! Thanks for sharing. :)

-Kristie

Eheheh! Your figures are extra funny and beautiful! Lucky family again!
I think the lizard is a mixing between a crocodile and a macaque.
The Marten has a strong personality!
The panda is clearly enjoying the party!
My my fa.. favouri... favourite the fox playing videogames, it is absolutly lovely and superb!
Eh, my old sister has the same work, I think she also should be a watching owl!
Crazy work with the Papillon, your Mum deserves it because she surely had and have a lot of work with you!
And your Dad always with his favourite animal, the wolf! I'm glad this sheepboy was drunk and the wolf also loves to dring!
Very nice, thanks for showing, I enjoyed a lot. I'm eager to see what our Sheepgirl thinks about it!

Wonderful little critters Anna, congratulation

Roger wrote:

:
I think the lizard is a mixing between a crocodile and a macaque.

It is a well known Scottish reptile : The crazy Mac...Codile

Holy Eggshell

They are just marvellous

I sit here with a large grin on my face, a grand surprise on a greay morning, yeppeee
I LOVE them, LOVE them ! All of them

He, he, hurray for the wolf, getting the best of the stupid drunk hunter

Your family is lucky to have you in the family

Wowie zowie! They are all so perfect! You have incredible talent and imagination! Bravo! Keep up the good work! Your family must be proud!

Very nice!! Congratulation!!!

They are gorgeous! You have so much imagination to make beautiful figures.
My favorite is the Maccodile ,he's such a funny guy! I'm sure your family was very happy with all of them.

Anna these are absolutely amazing!! So incredibly detailed, wow they are really great pieces, your family must be very pleased with them.

Amazing and funny

They are incredibly funny!
Thank You for showing Anna! Your family is lucky

Beautiful pieces Anna
You should organize your time better, seems that you always have a few sleepless nights before important Holidays

So beautitful and cute!

These are all wonderful!!! Your family is very lucky to have such wonderful gifts!!!!

Amazing! You MUST post their reactions!

brilliant, comical, beautiful. your family i'm sure loves them!
Max is exquisite!

Poor wolf. i wish people had been willing to allow her to live among them. i think a wolf is worth more than a sheep, but that is easy for me to say as they are not my sheep.....

Mastiffcat wrote:

brilliant, comical, beautiful. your family i'm sure loves them!
Max is exquisite!

Poor wolf. i wish people had been willing to allow her to live among them. i think a wolf is worth more than a sheep, but that is easy for me to say as they are not my sheep.....

I don't know each one is worth more but I'm sure a wolf is worth more than the money a human can win with a sheep!

Roger wrote:

I don't know each one is worth more but I'm sure a wolf is worth more than the money a human can win with a sheep!

a much better way of putting it! thank you.

What lovely figurines Anna!
I am sure your family liked them very much!
And i am sure Rogerio wants the fox that plays video-games to!

To sad this story about this wolf, what we Dutch must do, as a wolf was sighted here a few months ago to, he wandered here from Germany, and we did not even killed it, although here is much less space...

Wow! How beautiful they are, just amazing!
I'm sure your family liked them

Thanx kristie, Roger, Susanne, Minhea, Vivien, Andreas, Harriet, Martin, Ana, Robert, SyLoBe,
remrock, Jabberjey, carolynn, Willy, deseo (I hope I didnt forget someone)

@Roger; Haha, ye, maybe it is First i was going to make a croc, but then I thought it would be to hard, so I decided to do a lizzard instead, but in the end, it looked more like a croc anyway

I´m happy with the fox, I think the colors turned out good

@Robert; Yes I know, I suck at time planning

@Jabberjey; They mostly laughed, cant figure out why I think they liked them, My mum realy liked little Max, and she was especially happy, ´cus now she have both her animals as figurines (I made her horse last christmas). One of my little brothers even said "hey, your accually good at this" and that is a huge complimant comming from him
My dad loved his little wolf, and got a good laugh

@Carolynn; Yes, I was very sad when I heard they had shot her

The whole story;

In spring, a young female wolf, called "Kynna" walked down here to Småland from norway. She soon established a territorry, and me and a lot of others were thrilled, as it was the first wolf to settle down here for over 140 years.

The problem with southern Sweden (well most part of sweden) is that we have a lot of sheep-farmers. They are used to not having to worry about predators (wierdly enough, they never say anything about foxes, who every year take many sheeps ), and many of them dont even have fenses that keep the sheep in, much less keep predators out. And when they learned that a wolf had wandered here, they a once started shouting for her to be killed.
Neather of them took any precautions to keep their sheep safe (like better fences, keep the sheep in at night or shepherd animals) even thou we had a lot of volonters that were willing to help with the fencing for free, and they could apply for contributions for the fences.
All they said was "It cant be done"

And we also have a long tradition of hunting with unleashed dogs, so as you can figure, most hunters here hate wolves (That is the main reason wolfs are so hated in Sweden)

And unfortunetly, many people here still have the medieval belief that wolves are savage beasts that will eat our children Some people even wrote in the paper that now that the wolf were here, their children were´nt aloud outside of the house, they were afraid the wolf would eat them all (I must say, I´m a little ambarrased to call my self swedish when I hear such things)

So the situation was pretty tense. And since all sheep owners refused to protect their sheeps in any way, Kynna started to attack the sheep...
(One thing that made me especially angry, was when a sheepowner after the attack said to the newspaper; "I was expecting an attack, I knew that she was close" Then after the attack, he took the sheep in every night. This means that he could protect his sheep, he knew that an attack were likley, and yet, he did nothing!)

Eventually, the sheepowners won their fight and it was decided that she had to be killed

200 hunters went out in the forests to hunt her down. For two weeks, she evaded them (at the same time, idiots claimed that she was a "tame" wolf, not affraid of people. all the time she was here, I think about one or two people accually saw her, and she ran away both times).

But then, on week three, she was shot The only good thing you can say is that it was a clean shot and she died instantly...

R.I.P Kynna

Thanks for your sad and interesting story Anna!
Maybe some tales stories have bad influence in some regions! Here we also learn that wolves are terrible creatures and they are even and even rare. We have here a subspecies, of a smaller wolf called Iberian wolf.
Ahahah, crocodiles are really hard!
I love your fox not only because of color that is very good indeed, you did a personification of a human in a fox and it continues being clearly a fox, very foxy!
Have you ever tried a red fox not in comical interpretation? I'm sure the work would be superb! :)

What an excellent job with all of them.
I especially like the Papillion! I'm certain your mother loved it! :)

~ Sue

R.I.P Kynna indeed!
I wonder what happens to the wolf which was sighted around here in the southern parts of the Netherlands.
I hope it keeps a low profile in our crowded little country...

@Roger; Yes, old fairytales still have much power And the wolf has especially bad reputation amongst predators, and one of the reasons are religion (at least christianity). When that religion grew strong, and the bible was written, many people in that region had sheeps. and because wolf and sheeps dont realy mix, the wolf was chosen for reprecenting evil, while the sheep reprecented good.
And that idea lived on for a long time (and still does to some people), and in the "old ages" when churches had much power, they ordered people to kill all the wolves they saw, and every village had to have a wolftrapp (that was the situation in sweden from about 1100 - 1800century)

(other religions, like the native americans, worshiped the wolf and saw them as their "brothers")

Another "funny" thing, that you can think about. If you look at childrens books, movies, cartoons etc (both old and new), the wolf is often the bad guy (much more than other predators). other predators can be portrayed as both good and bad (se lions etc), but the wolf is almost always the bad guy. This teaches children from young ages that wolves are an evil creature.

About the fox. I have done one fox, but that was over a year ago, when I first started doing clay figurines, so it´s not that good
But maybe I´ll try again

@Sue; Thanx Yes, she liked it very much

@Willy; I hope it found a mate and got a big family