Cottage Frogs: Amazon Milk Frog Pine Needle Wall Art with Polymer Clay Frog Figurine (One-of-a-Kind)

From my Cottage Frog series, created especially for FrogCon 2022 in collaboration with my grandmother, each basket features an original, hand-drawn artwork of a different species of frog at leisure and cottage architecture from their native region. This basket depicts an Amazon milk frog with wooden headphones on, chillin in a hammock. In the trees behind them, a tree house sits high up in the vegetation with curtains blowing in the wind. Below them on a platform, their partner holds a mushroom parasol and enjoys the view from a wooden stump.

Pine needle wall hanging is woven entirely from red-dyed pine needles using tan and green cording, with a grapevine twisted around the exterior and small mesquite wood platform underneath. Polymer clay frog character is bespoke and molded for the piece and painted to match the Amazon milk frog or mission golden-eyed tree frog, complete with metallic gold for the eyes.

Measurements

• 12.00″ height x 9.00″ width x 2.50″ depth

About Nanny’s Creations

Nanny’s Creations is a fiber arts and craft brand run for decades by my dear grandmother, Marion Soper, aka Nanny. She’s an expert knitter, coordinates social groups, and teaches pine needle basket weaving classes at community centers in The Villages, Florida. We began collaborating together when the pandemic put a halt on her regularly-booked craft shows, as a way to allow her to continue her craft without cluttering up her space with additional inventory. Then, we kept doing it, because it was fun. Labor note: Nanny is compensated for her work in a method she deems fit, either financially or through creation and supply of custom painted polymer clay faces, which she uses for her own products.

About the Materials

Made with needles from the longleaf pine, a pine species native to the Southeastern US. These needles were collected from in and around central and southern Florida. These pines grow very fast and very tall and have needles that are anywhere between 8-22 inches long. The baskets are each unique, woven by hand using waxed cording from Maine Threads in Lewiston, ME, and decorated with upcycled jewelry and beads. Each is coated with Minwax to protect and preserve the handiwork. Baskets can be hand washed in warm soapy water.