Am I an Artist now? More new Creations…

I have been spending so much time needle felting and it feels great, especially after the kids are in bed. I love having a craft to dive into and I am loving the things that I create. I found an amazing supplier of roving and beautiful coloured wool in Montreal called Bure & Linon. Not only does she sell wool in Bulk (well bulk when you are needle felting) but she does so from her own home and I love to support someone local. I bought a few colours which was an investment, but I am looking at it in that way. As an investment. With each creation I make, the better I become and I am starting to recognize that.

Am I an artist now? Maybe I am.

I don’t know why, but for some reason I had an aversion to using that term to describe myself. I still do in a way, but today I used it. I do know that I am proud of my creations..

The last creations that I shared here were my first two mice with clothes…

The next thing I made was this bear. I bought the brown wool for him at the Waldorf store in Montreal. It is a Corriedale batting which is so easy to needle felt but I don’t find I have enough control with it. It is hard to get smaller details because it tends to over felt easily and become lumpy. However, to make the bear coat, it was great to use and I might buy more depending on what I would need.

My next creation was these two mice. A parent and a child with a crocheted Mei Tai. Of course I had to bring my love of babywearing into my craft! The MT even has a space for the little one’s tail.

Though I have a mouse head lying around in my things, (OK, that sounds a bit morbid) I decided to make a human next…

She is inspired by myself and Willa. I am not a big fan of purple but I asked Willa to choose the colour of the cress and purple is what she choose. She has a Crocheted ring sling which the little one fits perfectly into and her dress can move out of the way so that she can breastfeed easily. And, yes, she has breasts.

I love how no facial features can still show so much emotion…

My next creation is my largest one to date and the one that took the most amount of time and is my first ever cat.

I started with a wire skeleton covered in floral tape and built on that. At first it looked like a headless boney thing but slowly I added the muscles and shaped a body and then a rudimentary head with slight features…

After that I started to add the fur and the ears and features. I was really nervous in messing him up but I actually turned out great. He is also big! Like a small real cat big. He is 10 inches long with out his tail (about twice that with it) and he is about 7 inches high.

He has a tuff of white at the end of his tail and he is made from super soft merino wool which makes you want to pet him. He has perfect little pick pads under his feet and the cutest little cat nose. His whiskers are made of upholstery thread which turned out great as it has just the right amount of lift to the amount of floppiness.

Isn’t he adorable?

My latest Creation which I finished this morning is this woodland scene.

The story is… Maeve went out one beautiful spring afternoon to collect mushrooms and stopped on the way to take a little rest on a log that was next to two giant toadstools. A little bunny hopped up to inspect what was in her basket..

The base of this is made with a core wool surrounded by a lofty amount of soft Corriedale roving. I made two large toad stools and felted them into to the base. I then made the log out of a mix of browns and beige and then moss green on top and then the little bunny of grey merino.

Maeve has a wire frame to make her posable and hair hair in the most amazing and softest superfine Merino wool… (it was may more expensive but I had to have it)

The last thing I made was the basket and two tiny tiny mushrooms to go in it.

So back to the Artist word.

Well, about two weeks ago I stopped into a new boutique not far away from here that displays and sells the works of local artists. It was just before they closed on a Sunday afternoon and I went in to see what they had and mentioned that I make crafts and showed what I had made through pictures on my Ipad. They said they would love to see in person once they cam back from vacation. So today I called to see if they were open (they were not but opened any way) and I arrived with a box of my creations. It is a couple that runs the boutique and the guy took the cat right away and couldn’t believe it. They hadn’t heard of needle felting before so I had brought a bit of wool and a needle to show. They work on consignment and are open to me having things on ETSY to sell at the same time so I left quite a few of my creations there today. It felt so weird to leave them behind but it also makes me proud.

It is one thing to see it in an image but it is another thing to feel it in your hands. Especially the cat… the owned LOVED my cat 🙂

I am on display. People will see my art. So does that mean I am an Artist. I might just have to admit it.

Oh, they also want 8X10’s and 5X7’s of a selection of my photography images. So not only will I have needle felted creations but my photography on display and for sale also!!