Illustrated Ink!!

Christmas/Holidays is now officially over in Spain too, we've got our presents yesterday on the 6th, overindulged in Roscón de Reyes (if you have no idea what it is, here's what wikipedia says about it) and now it's time to take the decorations down, the lights off the streets, and start thinking about the plans for the New Year!


I have a few entries I should have done before, but between the holidays in India with G, the 5 days stuck in London, I have a bit of a backlog of posts, but I'll be catching up on the coming weeks!


Today, I'm gonna be giving the spotlight to the very awesome & talented Leila from Illustrated Ink! For my regular readers the name might sound familiar, cause I've already featured some brilliant custom work she did for me to give as gifts here.


Leila is a full time artist, that paints lovely originals, draw wonderful illustrations, and gives new lives to ugly old vintage pieces she finds, all in her unique mix of Day of the Dead and Old School tattoo style!


After loving the pieces she created for my friends, I knew I needed to get some her art for myself, so after much pondering and trying to choose (her Etsy shop is filled with loads of amazing pieces, from prints, to painted wall decorations, to some pull toys, to paper dolls... all sort of wonderful things!) I decided to go for two of her prints: the Day of the Dead Siempre cat print and the Day of the Dead Amigos dog print, not only cause they're perfect for any animal lover but also because she donates part of the profit from those prints to the Humane Society! And to complete my order, I went for one of her unique Vintage Style lockets, with her Day of the Dead Hello Kitty illustration! Truly a wonderful piece!





Both the prints have really vivid colours, and I'll be sure to frame & hang them once I get a place of my own!






I'm completely in love with the locket! As I'm sure many of you know I'm a huge Hello Kitty lover, and this necklace just combines that with my love for handmade, so it's a total win-win! And the size of the locket is perfect for my taste too! Not too big, but also not too small, and you can clearly see the image since it's enclosed in a dome that magnifies the image!















Leila also sent me a few postcards with some of her art, including one with the Day of the Dead Hello Kitty, and the colours are just fantastic! So alive and vibrant!




If you are looking for some art that is out of the ordinary, you must check Leila's! I'm sure you'll find something you'll love! She's even created a Pin Up Nurse Paper doll!

Shopping Handmade: Illustrated Ink!!

It's been a while since I've done a Shopping Handmade feature, and this time is dedicated to just one seller & artist, Leila from Illustrated Ink, that created two great custom pieces for me to give as housewarming gifts to two of my bffs!





I had been following Leila's blog (Tattoo Tales) for quite a while, when she showed off this lovely napkin holder she had painted with a winged cupcake and her usual colourful old tattoo style! So I got this idea of getting some custom made, not for myself since I have no place of my own, but for two of my best friends who have recently got their own homes!


Leila was super helpful and willing to work with me, so once she got the holders, we started discussing colours and how to better paint each one of them to fit the kitchens where they were gonna end up in! My friend Gema has her kitchen in lilac & green, so we went for a nice purple for the main colour, and Pilu's kitchen is more white & metallic, so we went with silver for the main colour.


Once both napkin holders were done I was blown away as what a great job Leila had made painting them in different colours, and even having the same design, how different each looked in their custom colours! Definitely something only handmade stuff can achieve!


When I got the package, both holders came lovely wrapped, all ready for gift giving, and Leila included two gorgeous postcards that I greedily decided to keep for myself!










Both my friends absolutely loved their napkin holders, and really oooooh'd and aaaaah'd at the fact that they matched their kitchen and loved the super cute cupcake painted there! Both love using it, for decorative purposes, and also during dinners and lunches with friends, when they both get many questions about where they got such an unique piece! They always say it's a special handmade piece that their friend bought directly from the artist, and I think that impresses people even more!

Gema's purple napkin holder

Pilu's silver napkin holder

I have to confess I can't wait till I can ask Leila to make me a pair of custom napkin holders for my own place! In the meantime I'm planning on getting a pair of her prints, and maybe one of her locket necklaces!

Custom Cranium by DeadThingsGrrl!!

One of the best things of getting handmade pieces is not only the fact that you are getting a piece made with love and dedication, but also the fact that you can be getting a piece custom made for you and only you, and get exactly the kind of unique and quirky piece of art, perfect for you, but that would be appreciated by the masses or would be in any "common" shops. But if you are a lover of the unique and the handmade, why would you want something common or mass-craved?

One of the advantages of being part of a forum like DIYScene, full of crafters and artists, is that you get to see loads of amazing pieces, and meet some amazing artists, and there is where I met Darien, the brains and talent behind Custom Cranium!

Custom Cranium is NOT the shop for those of you looking for cute, usual stuff that everyone and their grandma would like, it's the shop for those who love another kind of cuteness, the one that has a bit of dark, quirky and different in it. From her SnuffStuffies, not stuffed animals, but pieces of art, that give new life to old and abandoned animal bones and stuffed animals, to her amazingly unique jewellry, everything is different, in the best way possible, to the mainstream pieces of art that you can see anywhere.

Darien started painting My Little Ponies, to give them a new different, and let's face it, more awesome look! I remember wanting to have a MLP when I was about 5 or 6, but never got one, and seeing them, looking not as the simple mass-produced toys, but given new life as collection pieces of art, made ask, beg and plead Darien to paint me a custom MLP.

Her first painted MLP was a Day of the Dead MLP, an absolute brilliant piece, and asked her for something somewhat similar, in the DotD sort of style, and since she didn't have another white pony to paint, I went for a blue one, since blue is my favourite colour! I gave her my favourite colours, the request of the pony not having its hair cut, but otherwise gave her total creative freedom, and the piece she created, that she nicknamed Pilipony, surpased all my expectations!

We had a few issues with Darien's P.O. (I'm sure they wanted to keep my pony for themselves, evil people!) but she managed not only to ensure the pony arrived to my door, but also fixed her P.O. issues including kicking some arses and getting people that weren't doing their work fired, now, that's what I call fixing problems thoroughly!

So, now my Pilipony is home with me, and I keep nagging Darien to paint more ponies, cause I wanna have a whole collection! And if you had this beauty with you, I'm sure you'd think like me!

Don't you all want a custom painted pony now?