First Needle Felting

Well I spent a bit of time in an odd round-about yesterday. I had a really productive day and so I was able to take some time in the evening to work on art. I wanted to try and finish some kind of frame for the little picture of Feathers so I could give it to my friend today, but I tried a couple of times and failed miserably. The first try was felt covered with silk, and I kept cutting it wrong until I just trashed it. The second try was felt with a needle felted covering. Well I started to make the second one and then realized I really needed to try something smaller with the needle felting first, so I got out a test pice of red organza and then started applying some crimson wool to it to learn the process. In the middle of the testing somehow it started becoming a heart and so I just went with it. The needle felting is pretty amazing in that you can twist a very fine piece of wool and get some really cool detail. I haven't figured out how to get the back of the piece to look as pretty as the front yet.

I don't yet know how to use the camera well enough to show it, but the organza turned into this crinkled shiny halo around the soft flat surface of the wool heart with a little dark outline that almost looked like it was stitched. Well, I learned the technique and then tried to apply it to the frame and failed miserably. It pretty much looked like poo.

So I took a break and decided to play with my cute little heart and make it into a card, Valentines day being still fresh in the memory. In the process of figuring out how to do so, I came up with the idea of putting a gold edge on one of the layers of paper with some of my Acrylic paints. I tried it and it looked so good that my brain immediately made the leap to put it on the two little watercolors as well. It turned out to be the perfect thing to make them look finished.

The top photo shows the little Fairy as an example because Feathers got given away at lunch. Anyway, it was such a simple, easy and perfect solution, but I think it is funny that I had to go it such a different direction to finally get there.

I'm also proud that I am learning how to use the big camera and download the pictures to use here. I love my iphone pictures but they are just not high quality enough for the future endeavors.

Onward and upwards.