Details make all the difference, don't they? I started this little needle-felted person a few days ago & just finished it up tonight. Love those wool felt wings with their pink, blanket stitch edging. :) For scale in this photo, I have it sitting {appropriately} on top of a 3x3" canvas I bought from Julie while we were at Art Nest last February.
Tomorrow {and kind of related to this post} I'll show you the new art I bought!
♥
Stopped by Gloria's first to see how she did in her race. {Go Gloria!} Then went to Julie's where I found a powerful quote she had posted and was inspired by her lovely artwork to replicate this little person in felt. It still needs more poking (it's needle felted) before I can add arms & wings. Julie, maybe I'll send her down to live with you! Thanks for the inspiration, girls.
♥
Hoot! This girl-owl was made by my friend Meg. Love that little flower on her ear. :) We had a 'making felt things' get-together last weekend, which gave me a great excuse to buy some nice wool felt. Turns out that a 1/2 yard of every color is waaay more than a person needs to make tiny ornaments. Now I'm set for life.
This is the little house I made... That's the back view with the barn doors & snow on the roof. This is the front view after stitching it all up...
Glad I remembered how to do a blanket stitch for the edges. Usually, I have to look it up online before diving in. I like how my little house turned out. Now I just have a zillion yards minus about 5 square inches to use up! :)
If you'd like to see some houses by someone that really knows her felt, check out the beautiful work of Melissa Crowe at her Etsy shop Little Pink House.
♥
Here we are (me & my friend Meg) at the visitors center of Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. And the view without us in the middle of it...
Inside the visitors center we found these SO cute felt ornaments...
Aren't they sweet?
Before we headed back into Denver, we made one last stop at Meg's uncle's farm to meet... Noodles the Cow! Awwww.
Thanks for inviting me along, Meg! The trip was just what I needed. ♥
Getting into the fall/Halloween mode here. I'm going to make hair for her out of that pink wool roving. Now, on to make a little cape.
...and a bit later...
Cape done! A few details yet to come. I know I've mentioned this before, but I always get nervous at this point in making a girl that I'm going to ruin her when I do the face. :) I'm sure she'll come out OK.
♥
For quite awhile I've wanted to make a small felt owl. A family friend made one for me when I was a kid & it was always one of my favorite things. So this is my version of that little guy from memory. :)
He's only about 3 or 4 inches tall & has just a bit of stuffing to make him puffy. I like his crooked beak. ♥
This last weekend was the first Art Night get together! I should have taken a "before" of the table, but here it is while we were right in the middle of our needle-felting fun. Note the band aids & chocolate kisses - we were set for all eventualities!
Penny made this cute brown hedgehog...And Meg made a replica of their Volvo for her fiance. It's even got a roof rack!
Pam made a sweet little nest with eggs & also a heart shape with a pin-back sewn on - wearable art! My mom tweaked a couple projects she already had in the works ~ an easy chair for a critter to relax in and a teddy bear that needed a bit more padding in the rump. (Didn't get a photo of everybody's work before we packed up...too busy chatting!)
My daughter made some eggs in a frying pan, cooking over a camp fire. She clearly has more patience than I do for details! :) Everyone went home with some needle felting supplies & ideas for new projects. We're all looking forward to the next gathering in March ~ thanks girls!
#8 from my list ~ check! ♥
Workin' on my needle felting! This cutie is my first attempt at a hedgehog, although I keep thinking he looks a bit like a squatty sheep.
He was made in preparation for this coming Saturday - I'm having a bunch of girlfriends over for "Art Night".
Can't wait! Our project will be all-things-needle-felted. Since this will be a new craft to most everyone attending, I'll spend the week making up samples and little kits to work from. I thought this would be a great first-time activity for those that aren't usually crafty. Projects can be as basic or as detailed as each person prefers & no matter what ~ felted things are so cute! I want people to have fun and not feel as if the project is so hard that they could "fail". Needle felting will be perfect!
However, it did occur to me that we should have band-aids handy. Have you seen those felting needles? I expect to hear many yelps of "ouch!" as we try to chat & poke at the same time. Maybe we should have started off with painting? :o)
Have you ever participated in (or organized) an "art night"? I'd love to hear about your experience. Do you invite people you already know, or open it to anyone interested? Do people usually all work on the same kind of project? I read one blog about a group that gets together monthly & each person just brings what they're already working on...some painting, knitting, needlepoint - one person was even making her own perfume!
♥
She's walking down the lane, headed your way!
She's all needle felted with jointed arms and legs so she can move around. Her dress & wings are made from felted wool sweaters. Here she's takin' a stroll over my work table:
I was inspired to create this little bear girl by Jennifer Stanfield's blog, Cupcake Bears. She's s so talented, and obviously has tons of patience. The detail in her work is what really makes it special. ♥
The pink Valentines-y nest I made the other day really got me going on color. +I'm still loving how the shape of the wood works into these. Usually I get burnt-out on doing anything repetitive ~ assembly line crafting is just beyond my patience level! But with these, every one can be just enough different to keep me wanting to see how they'll turn out.
If I can make myself brave the cold this week, I promise to go out and get some appropriately sized mailing boxes. The intent here is to get these nests into my Etsy store soon. (Maybe before they take over every surface in my home?) And I hope some lovely Etsy shoppers will want to scoop them up! ♥
Awww...cozy, right? I decided to branch out a bit from bird-nest realism and go for a pink nest. Which then put me in the mood of Valentines - of course!
Pink (or red)+White automatically brings on visions of heart-shapes for me. Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday. It must me the kid in me. It's not unusual to find little scraps of paper around here with a heart shape next to the name of that certain someone. Just like grade school, right? *happy sigh* All this talk of Valentines has put me in the mood to make these, but practically everyone I know is on a new-year's diet, so I'll refrain.
In all my felting frenzy, I haven't forgotten the paintings I have in the works:This girl is coming together pretty well! And again, it makes me glad I spent some time collecting pretty fall leaves. You just never know when they'll come in handy.
♥
I can't decide if I like the speckled eggs or plain eggs. What do you think? I'm loving these twisty bits of wood though! Each one really has it's own character.
The year is off to a great start. I'm so inspired right now and have at least 6 different fun projects in the works. Moving back and forth between them is one of my favorite ways to spend a day. It's a great feeling to be waking up excited and ready to go.
Maybe these nests are an appropriate thing to be working on right now since I feel like I'm incubating a few big dreams of my own. As if each egg could represent a hope for the future ~ not quite ready to hatch yet, but soon.
Workin' on that!
Oh - and I just received some software in the mail that I've been waiting for. (Thank you Ebay!) Due to a big computer crash last year, I lost some software I needed to finish tweaking my website. Since April it's said "under renovation" - yikes. Way past time to fix that. Time to upload some software!
Update: the website is fixed! ♥
These little needle felted nests are so fun to make! For each one I use a piece of driftwood found locally, then felt the wool nest right around the wood. This stick is about 10" long and the eggs are a little less than an inch each.
In between paintings I'm working on series of these to post in my Esty shop. But first I have to find some appropriate boxes to mail them in! Maybe I should make them on shorter sticks. :o)
I like to imagine the wee beach bird that would have made her home here...
♥
Couldn't decide which goofy mouth to go with on my beanie-candy corn guy. They're all pretty funny though, don't you think? :)
This little guy is here to announce my one year "blogiversary". Ta-da!
I can't help it! Every year I think I'm not going to do this, but I just love putting together little Halloween gifties for friends and co-workers. There's just something great about handing them out. Plus, I'm a sucker for anything gift-wrap related so these boxes were too good to pass up. The felt ghost and pumpkin baskets in the background are my favorite finds of the season so far!
Inspired by all the candy and the sculpy left over from my Purkey, this little guy came to life too:
I've been experimenting with these needle felted presents. They started out being tiny - about 1" square. But - just like when I make chocolate chip cookies - each one gets a little bigger than the last! The one with the orange bow is about a 2". They're really fun to make though - so many color/pattern possibilities!
There's nobody living inside yet, but it looks like cozy real estate doesn't it?
To give credit where it's due, this mushroom/house wasn't my original idea. I was inspired by Kelley at Little Elfs Toyshop on Etsy. Check out her Bunny house and her Mouse house. So cute! I love those little mouse ears in particular.
Not only a duck, but...
a duck in a tub! I found these cute mini-wash tubs at Michaels and decided one of them should be a hot tub for this little needle-felted guy.
I like those little toes sticking over the edge. :o)
Another of the tubs became a great pin cushion. I just weighted it down with some acrylic stuffing beads, then hot-glued a felted sweater scrap into the top.
Yay! After a little hiatus to recharge creatively, I just completed this cute girl. She's the first character I've tried based on the Felt Wee Folk book I received for Christmas. They're so fun to make! And as you'll see below, there are already a few bits waiting in the wings to start the next girls:
I almost forgot...I wasn't able to show this before since I bought it as a Christmas gift. Isn't he cute?! You can get one of your own from this artist on Etsy. The quality is really wonderful. You can tell he was hand-stitched with care! So great to buy home-made.
This mouse has got it good. 
A warm blankie and all tucked in!
The square footage makes it hard to have a party, but it is cozy and warm. :o)
I'm not sure what kind of bird this guy is, but he looks a little surprised, doesn't he? Maybe he just woke up. The nest is built in the crook of a driftwood "tree" about 18" high. I have yet to attach the tree to it's wood base, but I do now have the ability since I received a cordless drill for Christmas! Yay! Love tools.
Starting of the new year crafting! Here are a few more more needle felting projects I have to share...
This nest is felted right around a little piece of driftwood. The eggs are about 3/4 of an inch long. {I've got to start adding a penny or something to these photos to give a sense of scale.}
All needle-felted with a few stick pins for sprinkles! It's about the size of a real cupcake.
Here are some of the books I received from Santa this year. I recommend them all - great photos, clear directions, and so many good ideas! Click on the photos to link to the amazon page for each.
There's this one by Salley Mavor. Check out her website to see some of the folks you'll learn to make. You can also purchase some of her originals here.
This pincushion book has ideas by many different artist's including Jen Segrest. I'm a fan of her work and mentioned her here after I learned how to make bottlecap pincushions.
~ and ~
I'm excited about all of my new books, but the Betz White might be the "icing on the cake"! Can't wait to make my own little pincushion.
Here's the best detail - she's got little feet! 
I was pretty happy with how this little "gift box" came out. I wasn't sure it would be possible to make corners out of wool roving, but it worked! Expect to see a lot more of these - hopefully posted on my poor, neglected shop very soon. After the holiday break, it feels good to be getting back in the groove.
This was my second needle felting project. I thought about giving them faces, hats, arms...but I decided that I like them kind of basic like this. They're about 4" tall.
