History of Caroline and her Witches

When I was a mere sparrow-like 7 year old girl in England I was certainly regarded as peculiar. I grew up in an old Tudor village in the countryside where the houses were older than the United States of America and the rooftops were made of thatch. I used to lean out of upstairs windows and pull straw from the thatch to make broomsticks to play on and give out to friends. And it was at this age that I wrote and illustrated my first book. It was called 'The Witch's Day'. It got my photo in the local paper.

It would be accurate to say that I've always had a passion for the subject of the fairy-tale witch.

I started developing 'Good Witches Bad Witches™' in 2015. The world and the characters have been so much fun to design and build. Almost from the very beginning it attracted interest and many of you wrote and asked me to sell them to you. I did not. I needed them for this project! But I began my research into how to get them mass-produced (in small numbers, but still) for you. For the past 9 months I've worked towards this. I am proud of what I created. Hortense is my finest witch. She's meticulously well made and I'm so happy with the result. I love the character of Hortense; a bad witch from Exilium - the land witches were banished to. She's a perfumer by trade and her story is a funny and interesting one (I'll tell you more about the books in development in another post soon).

This is a small run of 300 Hortense figurines. When they're sold out they're sold out. They're currently on a sale I am offering (of $40 off the total price) and then they'll return to the regular price.

Also, I spent the past 3 days editing together this video showing the process of creating Hortense, which I hope you enjoy.

I'm popping to England in a few days and will be gone for 2 weeks, but business will return as usual when I am back. Any queries, you can always message me via my Tall Tales Productions Facebook page. Until then, here are some of my witch characters. Thank you for following this project!

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A Collection of Witches...!

Hello, my favorite people! I hope those of you in the US and in the UK enjoyed the 3 day weekend! I spent it working on my latest witch which I have yet to unveil.... my Australian witch. (Still have about another week to go on her... I'm working slowly as I'm working with an injured arm!)

Anyway, updates...

Thank you to all those who purchased Hortense over the weekend and today. I am so glad that you did.

If any of you are considering getting her, let me point out that there are some left with the amazing $50 off deal.... so now's a great time to grab her - here.

To those of you that have written to me and said you're holding out for a different witch... first, thank you so much for your interest in my work. Secondly, I just want to add something here... to all of you really... without your support in making this Hortense run a success, there wont be anymore witches. And that would be such a sad thing. I am planning to release every single one of my witches as (very) affordable resin figurines, and I am already starting to embark on work for the second to be released (Olga - the Russian witch). But if this Hortense run doesn't happen, then I'll have to abort my plans to release my collection of witches.

If you love my witches but don't fancy buying a figurine / can't afford to buy, then thank you for taking this moment to show your support by sharing my work with someone who might like to purchase one. You can share my work via this blog, or better yet - via my Facebook Page, or my Instagram, or just by directly pasting this webshop link (https://www.tall-tales.com/hortense) in an email to someone who might like her!


Thank you for supporting what I do. I know some of you have followed this project for years, and with your support I can create the line of Collectible Resin Witch Figurines, and I can put out the books I am already working on and keen to put out. It's all of you who support my work (by either sharing my links or buying my work) that allows me to do what I do.

I leave you with some fun witch photos - a collection of them all huddled together, Olga (because she is the next one I will release this year - if Hortense is a success), and finally photos of Hortense who is available for purchase here now!

Also, a little moving glimpse of Hortense in this video I made below.

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Injury Makes the Comeback Sweeter...

Hi everyone!

First of all, apologies for being away so long.
Secondly, an explanation!

...I sat down at my computer early one morning and opened up my files... I was going to work on my book since I know it's keenly anticipated. (I receive on average 4 emails a week asking if my book is out yet. Seriously!) So... feeling a lot of self-inflicted pressure, I worked a typically long day. After 16 hours at my desk I collapsed into bed. Then next morning, blurry eyed and barely awake, I started brushing my teeth. Ruddy heck - my right arm hurt! Never experienced pain in any of my appendages before and this was pretty inconvenient so I ignored it but it got worse fast. It swelled until I literally had a Popeye forearm. Then it locked up altogether and didn't allow me to do anything. Not even hold a cup of tea - so you know it was becoming concerning to me.
A trip to the brilliant UCLA Orthopedic Center, and some x-rays and prodding later, I was told I'd given myself a nasty case of Tendinitis and was advised not to use my arm for the next "few months".

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg!!

So, it's been 9 weeks now and I'm itching to get back to work. There have been positives to my hiatus, and I'll blog about that silver lining soon.

Above is a silly little sketch I did yesterday to test my arm out. (See me sketching it here). It was meant to be me complaining about my arm, but it came out rather more flattering than intended. For those that don't know what I look like, my hair is a tad more like orange cotton candy and face leans more towards Disney villain than Disney princess! Anyway - you get the idea.

I'm back and here's the upcoming news...

I'll unveil my new witch tomorrow!

Sneak peek here

New videos will be uploaded to the YouTube channel soon... (honestly)...

Orders are still being dispatched (shop has remained open here) but commissions are not open yet. Feel free to email me about this.

Book is 9 weeks delayed. Seriously sorry about that, but there it is. As always, feel free to email me or get me at the Facebook page with any questions. :)

Have a great Friday night everybody!

Whose Pastime is to Make Midnight Mushrooms

Who knew that the title of this post is a Shakespeare quote from 'The Tempest'?!

"...and you whose pastime is to make midnight mushrooms..."

As the year draws to it's close I go through my endless folders and see what was done, what was finished and what's outstanding. It's at this time I often notice that things have been done and not written about.

So here we go! Let's catch up, and allow me to share a toadstool project from September of this year. Grumpy toadstools and mandrake seedlings (I'll write about them later). If you follow me on Instagram and Twitter then you've probably caught videos and images of these things in the making, but if you follow me only here and on Facebook then this post is for you.

I made quite a number of tiny 'terracotta' flower pots (no bigger than thimbles) and proceeded to pot each one with a colourful toadstool and scenic grasses / moss / soil. Learned a lot about toadstools in the process. Did you realise that they grow naturally in such a variety of psychedelic colours? It's amazing. Yellow toadstools (Amanita muscaria var. guessowii) and blue toadstools (Clitocybe odora) and so forth. So inspiring. 

I went on to make crackled glazed pots and filled them with grumpy toadstools with fabulous little faces. Each one of these is a 'one of a kind', and they're available at my webshop here.

See a making of video here...

Behind the scenes photos and more... Enjoy!

Stargazing and Flight

Creating the starry skies for my Greek witch (previous post about her here) made me think about Eilmer - a monk who lived in England over a thousand years ago, and who loved to gaze at the stars.

Quick history lesson - feel free to skip this section if you're 'only' interested in sculpture / miniatures / filmmaking! ....
Eilmer was special. Living in Malmesbury abbey in the 11th century - at a rough time when Viking raids happened around him, the inquisitive and visionary Eilmer did two things that others had not before. Studying the skies with a scientific eye, he was the one to note that if you lived long enough you could see a comet come round again.*
He was also one of the first to fly. Perhaps inspired by the Greek stories of Daedalus and his escape from the Labyrinth using wings fashioned from wax and feathers (which we know Eilmer read), Eilmer created his own wings using willow and parchment. He climbed to the top of the Saxon bell tower and jumped, gliding 200 meters before crashing and crippling both his legs. He lived to old age, recalling his flight adventure "and explaining the failure of his great enterprise with wry humour. It was his own fault, he would say. He forgot to fit a tail to his hinder parts."*
......

I painted the starry skies for my astronomer witch on particle board using first chalkboard paint (nice and matte) and then flicking acrylics using a toothbrush. Not my current toothbrush. That paint never comes out.

Watch the process of creating the witch here at my new little video at my Tall Tales Productions YouTube Channel.

Also, since you've been requesting it, I will be making prints and posters of this scene available at my webshop here very soon. Please feel free to email me directly if you want to reserve one.

The Greek witch with her starry night skies

Finally, in my Southern California adventures, I finished up the Greek witch and then flew off to San Francisco in my friend's plane. Flying in a little Cirrus is exhilarating - partly because it's so damn unsafe and I often wonder how close I am to death on take off and landing (despite the pilot being an exceptional one), and also because I can sit right up with the controls and marvel at the flying machine that it is. I wonder what Eilmer would think if he was sitting there with me.

Here are some iPhone snaps of my mini break in San Francisco and the flight over!

* Words about Eilmer the monk taken directly from Robert Lacey's absolutely brilliant book 'Great Tales From English History'. If you only ever read one history book in your lifetime - let it be this one. If you have no interest in history - this will change your mind.

What's the Buzz?!

What's the buzz?! ...This week the buzz is all about the videos I made as a parody of the 'Tasty' recipe videos.

Full post about it here on my blog, yesterday.

One of my videos has already had 500k views in less than 48 hours. It's the second most watched video at Buzzfeed video this week. Pretty decent for a video I put together quite quickly this weekend, following a call from Instagram who asked me to do something special to mark the occasion of them hitting 500 million Instagram users. :)

Buzzfeed thought it would be fun to show their fans a 'behind the scenes' glimpse of me working, so I went over to their studios on Sunset Blvd, two days ago, and we shot a 20 minute segment of me creating realistic miniature food including bagels and lox, limes, iced donuts, cake with birthday candles and shrimp fajitas.

It broadcast as a live-stream on Buzzfeed's DIY video channel here. You can find it there or see a clip from it at my Instagram here. 

Stills of this video piece!

And in case you're wondering what all this miniature food is about when you started following this blog because you were interested in my miniature witch sculpts and 'Good Witches Bad Witches'... don't worry! I am working on a new witch right now (you might have seen the sneak peek a few days ago here on Instagram) and she's almost finished. Stay tuned for many more witches coming soon.

Behind the Taste

Catch my miniature parodies of the awesome 'Tasty' videos yet?!

(Tastys are 60 second cooking tutorials created by Buzzfeed video.)

Today Instagram is celebrating hitting 500 million users and they contacted me and two other Instagram users (out of 500 million of us - yeah, I feel special!) to profile the three of us to mark the occasion. They got Buzzfeed to cover it and it all began at the weekend, which I spent creating something a little special just for them.

Buzzfeed writes about it here.

I created two miniature parodies of two of Buzzfeed's 'Tasty' videos.

* Tasty video 'Shrimp And Avocado Salad' - watch the REAL TASTY VIDEO here!

My miniature parody is here!

Or, watch my parody on buzzfeedtasty's Instagram here!

* Tasty video 'One- Pan Sriracha Chicken and Veggie' - watch the REAL TASTY VIDEO here!

My miniature parody is here!

Or, watch my parody on buzzfeedtasty's Instagram here!

The behind the scenes process...

I created all the components for both recipes, which included raw chicken thighs, slightly cooked chicken thighs, more cooked chicken thighs, shrimp (again, cooked in three stages), raw bell peppers, onions and potatoes, cooked  bell peppers, onions and potatoes, avocados in 5 different stages of prep, whole lettuce leaves, chopped lettuce leaves etc etc! It took me a whole day just to create the miniature ingredients, and I used polymer clay and mixed media for all of it.

Then I set up a camera on a tripod, set up some bright lights, picked out my best miniature mixing bowls and cookware, and started filming the recipe process whilst watching the real videos for reference!

I edited them together, changing the speed at times to match the real videos. Voila! Besides my Instagram, you can also find these videos on my YouTube channel here.

Why choose me?!

Apparently it was the timelapse pancakes video that caught the attention of Instagram! Watch it here.

Life, in a Teacup

In a nutshell / teacup... in other words, condensing my past month into a quick update!

My website has had a face-lift and is hopefully a little easier to navigate around. And if you wait another couple of days there will be an online shop attached! Many of you probably know that I've sold miniatures and art prints on 3 Etsy shops for the past 5 years, and that wont change, but you can now buy directly from me as well. This means prices will often be lower, so worth a look if you're someone who shops for individual miniature pieces / figurines and prints.

Tall Tales Productions website here!

Behind the Scenes...

You've been asking for more photos and videos of what goes on behind the scenes, so I'm endeavouring to oblige. If you follow me / Tall Tales on Instagram then you probably caught this!

I've also made another quick little video up on the new YouTube Channel here which shows me making the Trick or Treat scene. More video tutorials / time-lapses will show up soon.

Also...

Another watercolour painting or two (which I've yet to scan and share)...

Another article which you can see more of on the Press Page of my site!

In other news, I am really honoured to be included on the Creative Talent Network's site here. It's run by Tina Price and if you're at all familiar with CTN you might even know that they're having an event this weekend. Details here. If you're in LA then come along and say hi to me there.:)

Aside from work, I'd love to share with you a new place I discovered in LA. The Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve. Went there on Easter Sunday and it was out of this world. Put it on your 'to do' list, but mind you pick the right time of year to see it. Bye for now and have a fantastic weekend!