At the Sand In Your Eye ice sculpting studio we are always looking for new ideas and ways of innovating. One of our new ice carving ideas for 2021 is negative ice sculptures. This exciting way of ice sculpting magically carves the design actually inside the block of ice!

The first time we created negative ice carving was for our ice sculptures for Light Up The Valley – Hebden Bridge’s winter extravaganza which told the tale of the dragon of Hebden Royd searching for her eggs. We were asked to create not only an ice sculpture of the dragon but also to realise the eggs with baby dragons curled up inside waiting to hatch. How to do this? The answer was a negative ice sculpture!

This proved very popular with visitors to the ice, music and fire event in Hebden Bridge and people marvelled at how we had managed to get the baby dragons inside the ice sculpture. Because the ice carving is deep inside the ice block the details are less susceptible to melting – this meant the ice sculpture lasted for several days, perfect for the many evenings and days that Light Up The Valley ran over. At the end of each day the ice sculpture was popped back in our freezer and brought out for the next event.


Jamie and Claire’s eldest daughter Florence’s birthday is in December so the lucky girl always gets an ice sculpture at her party – this year the ice sculptor couple were determined to give her an birthday celebration with a difference and created an animal safari of negative ice carvings for Florence and all her friends around our West Yorkshire studio. Everybody had a great time running around outside in the fresh air trying to find all the animals.

If you would like your own ice sculpture trail featuring our exciting negative ice sculptures please do get in touch, we can make them in all shapes, themes and sizes – the ones for the party were much smaller than our usual ice sculptures, Florence’s little sister Emmeline helpfully posed with them for scale.




















