Alaska-born artist Lee Cross is making childhood dreams come true. If you ever wanted to have a baby lion or a baby fox as your companion, now you can make that happen thanks to her life-like animal toys.
Cross, who is self-taught and has no formal training, replicates the animals almost to perfection. This includes recreating facial expressions and body gestures as well as making them weight like their real-life counterparts. This helps create the feeling of holding a living creature. While Cross bases most of her works on real animals, she also isn’t a stranger to creating fantasy creatures.
According to her agency, Cross started creating these unique pieces when she was only 13 years old. After receiving encouragement from her friends and family, she started selling them online. People from all around the world quickly fell in love with her works, and there are now even those who collect them.
All of Cross’s toys are entirely made by hand and created from scratch. She first makes a wooden skeleton of an animal and then gives it padding to create the “softness.” The skeleton is then wrapped in synthetic fur and given the shape of an animal. The finer details are then added using acrylic paint.
Check out more of these amazing animal toys below.