Waxela (wa-shay-la) Sananda

Waxela has been creating art since early childhood.She grew up at beautiful Lake Okoboji, Iowa, and she went to the College of Design at Iowa State University graduating in 1993. Waxela has been the owner of several retail shops, including a gift and jewelry design store for 12 years where she created custom jewelry work for customers, and a toy shop which she owned for 6 years at an amusement park.

As a small child Waxela’s mother showed her an art catalog and asked what she would like. Waxela chose a set of 24 small colored blocks of clay that would never dry out. For years Waxela spent many hours a day in her room sculpting tiny people, animals, and scenes with her clay. She discovered polymer clay when she was 10 and continued making miniature art in that medium. Waxela still loves polymer clay and uses it in many of her mixed media works, art dolls, cake toppers, miniatures and jewelry.

Today Waxela nurtures her love of nature and spirituality through her art. She creates goddesses and deities, nature scenes and animals, often putting them in shadow box scenes or vintage boxes made into altar boxes.

In October of 2008 Waxela sculpted a tiny polymer clay sock monkey Christmas tree ornament and placed it in her SpiritMama shop.  Little did she know what was soon to come, an explosion of sock monkey orders for Christmas, Valentine's Day, and cake toppers for parties, weddings, birthdays and baby showers.

Waxela spends her free time sculpting and making art dolls in her home studio in South Austin, where she lives with her husband, Brett, her daughter, Josiah and her baby Gabriel.

More of Waxela’s art and jewelry can be seen at SpiritMama.etsy.com