Hi there, my name is Sophia and I am the artist behind Sophia's Workshop. I do not have a nice long biography for you, but I will do my best to give you an idea on who I am and how I came about doing what I do.
When I was little, I was only really into two things. One was doodling, the other was modeling things out of clay. Doodling was something I got into on my own, but playing with clay was totally my mom's influence. She had gotten into the art of paper clay when it first became popular and went all the way from just taking lessons to earning a teaching certificate from Japan. As a result, I picked up a lot of sculpting techniques simply by watching or playing next to her.
While clay was fun, I didn't really think I would be able to make a living off of it. Instead I set my mind on becoming an animator and put my doodling skills to use. After two animation schools and a short year or two on the edge of the animation industry, I quickly realized that not only was getting a stable art related job hard, always working long hours on someone else's idea wasn't quite what I envisioned either. So like many artists out there who were somewhat frustrated with the way their art career was going, I went and picked up a couple of day jobs instead and searched for something else to be my creative outlet.
Upon one of those searches, I ran into my husband, John. We worked on a couple of projects together and discovered that we liked to hang out with each other. Ignoring the fact that none of our projects went very far, we tied the knot anyway.
In the middle of applying some personal touches to our wedding, like any artistic gal probably would, I recalled my clay modeling skill which I had not used for years and made myself a custom wedding cake topper.
You can probably guess what happened next. Just one of those times where you make something just for yourself and you end up getting lots of compliments and even requests for similar items. Before I knew it, I signed up a shop with Etsy and started selling custom cake toppers online to people all over North America.
And you know what? I love custom works. I worried that it would be difficult working with someone's specifications all the time, but it has turned out to be extremely rewarding. I really like how every customer I work with is unique, that every project I do has different sets of challenges, and that every single one of my sculptures goes to someone who will treasure it.
