Today we’d like to introduce you to Laura Mauger

Laura, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?

During the pandemic I got back into making art more frequently, and it was then that I tried making polymer clay jewelry for the first time. I had some leftover Sculpey from a previous project and I sculpted it into some flower earrings and necklaces. They were all white since that was the only color of clay that I had, so I decided to paint them. That’s how I got started with my painted clay jewelry style. When things started to open back up in 2021 I began working part time as an assistant for a luxury wedding and event company and tried testing out selling my paintings and polymer clay jewelry at a few small events on the side. In 2022 I decided to make my art an actual business and continued the assistant job while selling my art.

As I participated in different art events and saw what items sold best, there was a trend of people purchasing my painted polymer clay jewelry over my other art. This led to jewelry becoming more of my focus and eventually experimenting with making crowns.

After lots of thought and prayer, in 2023 I made the decision to switch to making art full time. Since then I have greatly increased and expanded my sculpting skills to focus more on creating unique crowns for weddings and cosplay along with cute whimsical earrings. In addition to participating in shows, I currently have a physical shop inside of my local Painted Tree Boutiques in Glen Allen, Virginia.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

It has definitely been a bumpy road along the way. Becoming an artist doesn’t have one set path to follow and finding the one that’s right for me has been a challenge. One of my beginning struggles was just finding events to participate in. There was a lot of googling involved and searching event websites. In many instances, by the time I found out about an event, the deadline to enter had passed or the event itself had already happened. Probably about half of the events that I have participated in were because I went to one event and talked with other artisans and they recommended events that they had done in the past. Then I had to wait another year to apply to be a part of them.

Sometimes it’s been a struggle to make back the booth fees for events as some can be a couple hundred dollars for a two to three day event. There’s even been a few events that I have done where I ended up not selling anything and those can be really discouraging.

At the end of 2022 I had decided that beginning in 2023 I was going to switch to doing art full time. That year then proceeded to be a year of a lot of medical problems that created very large bills for my husband and I to pay. This included multiple expensive tests for me that culminated in the removal of my gallbladder and my husband had two emergency room visits, one where we spent Christmas day in the hospital. Overall, it put a lot of financial strain on us and the after effects have lasted into 2024.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

Right now I am focusing on creating wearable sculptures, specifically creating fantasy and mermaid inspired crowns and hair combs. Each piece is hand sculpted from a single color polymer clay like Sculpey Premo, Super Sculpey, or Sculpey Living Doll, and then hand painted with acrylic paints. Every single piece is unique and one of a kind. They’re special pieces for special moments in the stories of our lives like weddings, fantasy balls, or cosplay. My crowns are meant to spark joy, cultivate beauty, and allow you to enter into a greater story full of wonder and whimsy.

What sets me apart from a lot of other crown designers is that my work doesn’t have very many premade elements, and my wearable sculptures are mostly made of polymer clay. The frames for each design are wire that I have bent and wrapped to my desired shape and all of the clay pieces are sculpted and painted by hand instead of created from molds. Depending on the design I might add some purchased jewel charms, chains or glass gems, but overall the designs are made up of what my hands can fashion from the clay. Then the paint job is what really makes the pieces. Each crown is hand painted in a way using light and shadow to enhance the sculpture and accentuate the texture or create texture that wasn’t there before. I put a lot of detail into my work and it shows.

My designs can even be created to match different outfits, so that if someone wanted to commission a crown to match their wedding dress or mermaid tail, I could create something that paired well aesthetically. Currently, the project I am most proud of is a masquerade mask that I made to match a dress that I was going to wear to a local masquerade ball. It looks almost exactly like the sketch I had drawn and it just turned out so beautifully with its ombre color scheme.

Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?

Pinterest and Canva have been really useful for me in the planning stages of creating crown designs. I use Pinterest to search for inspiration and will pin things to boards on there and then use Canva to further focus an idea by creating a mood board from the photos I previously found. Once the mood board with the corresponding color scheme is created, I am able to more easily sketch out designs in a sketchbook.

When I am actually creating, I usually start my week with listening to sermons on YouTube from churches like Elevation, Fresh Life, Fearless LA, and Social Dallas. I find the messages encouraging and help me to set a positive focus for the week. Then later on in the day or week, depending on my mood, I will listen to music and podcasts on Spotify. One of my favorite podcasts is “Tales from the Stinky Dragon”, it’s a Dungeons and Dragons storytelling podcast for people who, like myself, don’t necessarily play DND. They do character voices, have voice actors for their NPC’s, and even include background music. It’s very well done and I really enjoy listening to it. The other podcast I listen to is one my husband started, it’s called “The Voice of Adventure” and it’s a storytelling podcast where he reads various short stories that he’s written. Since most of the sermons and podcasts are around forty-five minutes to an hour long they really help to pass the time while working at home, on my different projects.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lauramauger.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maugerlc
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maugerlc

Image Credits

Josiah Mauger, Laura Mauger