Beyond the Figurine: Three Artists Reimagine Art & Toys at Pop Toy Show 2025
An afternoon at the Pop Toy Show became a lesson in the many ways creativity translates into craft, community, and commerce. Three women, Yeap Yi, Carina Wong, and Sriste Tan, stood apart in style yet aligned in spirit: playful makers who move seamlessly between illustration, object-making, and entrepreneurship. Their practices speak to different starting points and a shared resolve to turn ideas into characters, characters into products, and products into connections.
Caricature roots, collaborative craft
Yeap Yi’s pathway began in college with a practical urgency, earning an allowance through caricature commissions, yet it traces back to a lifetime of drawing. Eleven years later, those early commissions have become a sensibility: playful economy, strong line work, and an eye for visual trends that translate across media.
Her approach is collaborative and iterative. Ideas start from the creed of “cute and trendy,” then get refined through practice simplicity in form, craft-forward thinking, and attention to visual appeal. Yeap Yi treats trend-awareness not as a chase but as a framework for experimentation: try everything, keep what resonates, and iterate quickly. That insistence on variety is itself entrepreneurial: broad skills, ready pivots, and a steady confidence in putting work into the world.
Charming persistence, character-led commerce
Carina began as a diarist of delight. What started as an Instagram art blog became a living lab: daily drawings, little narratives, and an audience that gently nudged her to merchandise the characters they loved. That nudge turned into a leap. She taught herself product design, collaborated with other makers across borders, and brought to life a cast of “adorable yet relatable” figures born from everyday memories and a very loved Pomeranian, Muffin.
Her studio practice is an evolution of tenderness and ambition. The softness of her characters is intentional: they embody the small, imperfect moments we keep for ourselves. Carina frames imperfection as a theme “perfectly imperfect,” and turns it into a design philosophy. The result is work that invites recognition: people smile because they see themselves reflected in a bun, a face, a moment rendered as a sweet, portable object.
Photo credits: Carina Wong
Humour, tactility, and local intimacy
Sriste’s process is quieter and tactile. Ideas live in lists or simply in her head until they assert themselves. She rarely begins with sketches; instead she translates a complete visual from mind to page and adjusts as the piece finds its balance. When the idea demands a figurine, she becomes a material investigator, sourcing components, testing sculpting techniques, and sometimes letting pieces rest until the right materials or energy return.
Her work orbits comfort, joy, and connection. Blobbie, her signature character, functions like a soft language for everyday emotion, small, local jokes folded into shapes that feel familiar to people who live where she does. Sriste’s practice is entrepreneurial in a quietly rigorous way: she experiments, learns the constraints of production, and knows when a concept needs a pause to make room for better ones. The humour in her pieces is a doorway; the craft behind them is the home.
Photo credits: Sriste Tan
Divergence and a shared entrepreneurial thread
The three practices reveal a variety of avenues of growth in a creative practice. Carina’s audience-grown characters, Sriste’s material-first sculpting, and Yeap Yi’s commission-to-brand evolution converge where it matters. Each artist translates intimacy into product: personal memory, local humour, or college-era hustle becomes merchandise, figures, and collaborations. Each has learned to treat audiences as partners, production as pedagogy, and setbacks as part of the studio practice.
Carina leans into narrative warmth and learned risk-taking.
Sriste balances experimentation with the patience to wait for the right material or method.
Yeap Yi champions breadth: test widely, refine quickly, and let her craft evolve with demand.
One word of advice, spoken across time
When asked what they would say to younger selves, their answers felt like three refrains of the same song. Carina urges persistence to keep striving, keep sharing, because the work and the people who matter will appear. Sriste advocates faith and patience, allowing setbacks to be part of the process and accepting help when needed. Yeap Yi’s quick counsel is kinetic and direct: to try everything. Together, the trio’s counsel maps a path for any maker: experiment generously, sustain curiosity, and turn small, imperfect acts of creation into something that others can hold.
At the Pop Toy Show, Carina, Sriste, and Yeap Yi showed how diverse aesthetics and approaches become businesses without losing voice. Their work is a reminder that entrepreneurship in art considers scale and impact, making durable forms of joy and, in doing so, inviting others to cherish them.
Thank you for joining us as we unraveled the inner worlds of these artists, tracing touch points around Singapore that shape their voices and craft; we look forward to bringing you across the border in our next feature, where more makers, stories, and small epiphanies await.