About Alexia
Who am I/how did I get here?
Hey all!
I'm Alexia, currently the sole designer/artist/crafter and owner of Elven Lion Art. I'm 26 and for every one of those years I've had a love for all things artistic, magical, spiritual and meaningful! Being inventive, imaginative and creative is something that I have always been passionate about - not just with words, but with anything I set my hands to! I have spent my life so far diving headlong from one creative project to another - when I was young, I wrote short stories (and very long stories)! Then, I formed a band and composed my own songs. I began a creative writing course at university, and now, I've started this business of selling my art. It took me a while to find out what I wanted to focus on for the rest of my life (I've always been interested in too many of the creative arts) but now, I believe, I have found it! The Adornarium offers me just enough stability of knowing what I need to do, is more realistic for me to be able to find success in, but is just flexible enough for all my creative ideas!
Here is a throwback to when I used to play music all the time...
What inspired 'Alexia's Adornarium'?
Back in 2015, after recommendations from friends, I visited Glastonbury for the first time (the town, not the festival), and that experience changed my life. Never before had I been to such a spiritual place, and I became determined to make my own jewellery that captured the free-spiritedness and reverence for nature that permeated the area, and all of the items that were sold there. It felt like I had come home, and all I wanted was to do was create my own world that evoked that same incredible atmosphere that I had been searching for all my life - where fantasy and reality collided in beautiful explosions of colour.
Just look at this amazing shop front in Glastonbury! Here, people put their all into showcasing their items in the most imaginative and magical-looking way!
And there were so many crystals there as well!!
How did I start 'Alexia's Adornarium'?
It was only in May of 2017 that I finally decided to put my ideas into practice (you can thank procrastination and general anxiety for that). And this is because my (now ex, but still best friend) partner at the time encouraged me in my plan of setting up a jewellery/art business. Because he believed in me, it gave me the final push I needed to set up the Adornarium. I first came up with the name Alexia's Adornarium - 'Adornarium' being a combination of two words, 'adornments' and 'imaginarium' - and I knew that this would be perfect, as it encapsulated not only what I would be selling, but also what I hoped my shop would be - a place dedicated to the imagination! I then began crafting pendants with polymerclay and crystals, being self taught by YouTube tutorials and my own intuition. I found that polymerclay very much suited my aims as it was just as flexible and versatile as someone with my imagination needed, and to this day it is still my primary material for my pieces.
I already knew I loved creating artworks - this is a charcoal portrait I drew years prior to starting the Adornarium of Rick Grimes from 'The Walking Dead'.
This is one of my earliest pieces - as you can see, my primary focus was making unusual and nature-inspired necklaces back when I first began!
Where is 'Alexia's Adornarium' now?
These days, my business slogan is "an elemental world of fantasy art" as whilst I originally started out making jewellery items, this evolved into art dolls and other sculptures as my skills and interest in arts and crafts developed. So now the creations I make can span a very wide range of themes - but the constant being that they can all be tied in somehow to the fantasy world of the Adornarium, and one of the five elements present within that. Currently my most sought-after items are definitely my dragon figurines, and these are what you will see listed in my shop most often! My primary method of promoting my art (and the social-media website I am most active on) is Instagram, which I am proud to say now has over 7000 followers and counting (after many long hours of creative experimentation, hard slogs of working, blood, sweat, tears, and moments of pure joy!) In the beginning my primary mode of selling was through the platform of Etsy, but these days I am trying to push this place - my own website, my own world, where the concept of 'The Adornarium' as a parallel universe/an entire planet can be taken from the fantastical visions in my head to the reality of how this website actually looks and functions.
Here is an image of the bookshelf of one of my wonderful Instagram followers - it is teaming with the dragons she purchased from the Adornarium! I am so grateful for any and all support I get from my followers - be it by sharing and spreading the word of the Adornarium verbally, or by purchasing the pieces I create themselves!
What is the ethos behind 'Alexia's Adornarium'?
All I've ever wanted to do was bring more of the other-worldly into the real world, and to give others a glimpse into the vivid imagination that has kept me busy daydreaming for years (yes, I never paid attention much in my non-creative school subjects!) There is so much that is magical and more than what meets the eye in life and in our minds, and I want to take all of this and turn it into something real and tangible through my art.
I want to give people hope that success is not necessarily following the crowd, and the path of academia (something that was drilled into me all through my education) or necessarily participating in the rat-race that is contributing to real problems in our society (and arguably, could be turning people into cold, unreflective robots). I want to inspire people to realise that there is greatness in being yourself, and doing what you can do well and enjoy, not necessarily what is expected of you.
I also want to encourage people to have appreciation for nature, not as something that is just a resource, but as something sacred from which many incredible things can occur. The world of the Adornarium is one that is wholly natural, comprised of the five key elements that make up our world, and is wholly untouched by mankind's destruction and greed. The fantastical creatures that inhabit it represent what wonders might occur if for once, we stop crucifying our own world and allow the all-providing and creative power of nature to be fully-realised again. In this sense, the concept of the Adornarium as a world, and 'Alexia's Adornarium' as a business, represent my own hopes for our planet, and our society.
I will leave you with these pictures of myself enjoying nature - my primary inspiration for everything I do!
If anything I said here resonates with any one of you reading this right now - please send me a message through the green 'click to chat with Alexia' button! There seems to be so few people in this world who feel the way I do about things, and I love making new friends. :)