Search for a custom pet figurine and you will find a thousand shops that make dogs. A few hundred that make cats. Almost nobody who will touch a guinea pig. 🐹
We get that email a lot. Someone has a photo of their piggy, they have already been turned down twice, and they open by apologising for asking. You do not have to apologise. We make guinea pigs.
That is one of ours, sitting next to the piggy she was made from. Same rosettes, same little white sock on the front foot.
Why most shops say no
It is not laziness. Guinea pigs are genuinely harder than dogs, for three reasons that only show up once you try.
The rosettes are basically a fingerprint. An Abyssinian carries eight to ten of them, and no two piggies wear them in the same spots. Get one rosette wrong and the whole animal stops being yours. A Labrador, by comparison, is a shape you can look up.
Coat direction does most of the work. On a Peruvian the hair falls forward over the face. On a Texel it spirals. On a Teddy it stands up dense and slightly wiry. Paint all of them with the same smooth strokes and you get three identical guinea pigs in different colours, which is not what you asked for.
They are small, so mistakes are loud. A patch that sits two millimetres off on a Golden Retriever disappears. On a piggy that same two millimetres is the difference between her face and some other guinea pig's face.
Cats and dogs are just where most people start
Guinea pigs are not our only detour. We have painted rabbits, rats, hedgehogs, a few hamsters, and this sun conure whose owner sent us eleven photos because she would not sit still for any of them.
If your animal has a face, we can probably do it. Send a photo and ask.
The photos we actually need
This is the part that decides how close the finished piece gets, and almost everyone sends the wrong angle first. Not their fault. People photograph guinea pigs from above, because that is where you are standing when you pick her up.
- Get down to her level and shoot from the side. Phone on the floor, piggy on the floor. One clean side view tells us the body shape, the leg length and where the colour blocks sit. From above we mostly get a furry oval.
- Include the whole animal, feet and rump. The rear rosettes matter and they are the first thing people crop out.
- Daylight near a window, no flash. Flash flattens the coat and turns dark eyes into two white dots, so we lose the exact shade of her fur.
- If she has swirls, send one extra photo of them. Abyssinian, Texel, Silkie: a top down shot of the coat pattern, on top of the side view, not instead of it.
- Blurry is fine if it is the only one you have. Especially for a piggy who has passed. We work with what exists, and we will tell you honestly what we can and cannot read from it before you pay.
What happens after you order
Every full body piece is modelled from scratch, then painted by hand, one colour at a time. No mould, no batch, nothing printed onto the surface.
When the painting is finished we photograph it and send you the photos. If the rosette on her shoulder sits too far back, you say so and it goes back to the painter. Nothing ships until you tell us it looks like her.
If she has already gone
A good half of the guinea pig requests we get are memorials. Piggies live five to eight years if you are lucky, which is long enough to become part of the household and short enough that it always feels early.
If that is why you are here, two things worth knowing. You can send old photos, phone quality, anything. And you can tell us as much or as little as you want about her. Some people write a paragraph about how she used to popcorn across the kitchen when she heard a bag rustle. The painters read those. It changes how they do the face.
FAQ
Do you really make guinea pigs, or is this a dog figurine with different colours?
Really. Each one is modelled from your photos, so the body shape is your piggy's body shape, not a template with a new paint job.
What if I only have one photo?
One good side view is usually enough. Send it over and we will tell you before you order whether we can read what we need from it.
Can you match an Abyssinian's rosettes exactly?
That is the part we care most about. Send a top down photo of the coat along with the side view and we will place them where they actually sit.
How big is it?
Four sizes, starting at four inches. For a guinea pig the four and six inch sizes are the ones most people pick, since they sit close to life scale for a smaller piggy.
What if it does not look like her?
You see photos before it ships. If something is off, it goes back to the painter and gets fixed. That is included, not an extra service.
Can you do two piggies together?
Yes, and it is worth doing if they were cage mates. Message us and we will sort the pricing.
Do you make other small pets?
Rabbits, hamsters, rats, hedgehogs, birds, reptiles. If you are not sure, send a photo and ask. We would rather say yes.
