Lost and Found

If you've been a reader of my blog, you know I love Hallowe'en.  Sooner or later, I was obviously going to felt a skull, right?  Of course!

I was inspired by this image shared on "All Things Halloween" on Facebook.  Sadly no credit was given for the image, so if you know who the artist is please let me know.  

My sister had given me some lovely, dyed pieces of felt that looked beautiful on their own so I wanted to use them in a way that would show them off.  This was the perfect project!

The dyed felt pieces are from Etsy seller Steph's Crafty Bits.  I cut the green and brown pieces to form the background and needle felted them to a plain piece of felt for stability.

  Isn't the green lovely, it's a forest without having to add anything extra!

I printed a second copy of the image to cut out the skull as a template...

From natural white prefelt purchased from Saira at Fibrecraft, I cut out the skull shape...

 and gently pulled away the eyes, etc..., as I needle felted it to the background.

A book on painting advised to always do the darkest parts first, so I did the darkest areas in black.

Using a Blue Faced Leicester fibre in shades of grey from The Spinning Spider, I filled in the dark spaces...

This took some time and trial and error, but it was amazing how the skull became more and more real!  I used a little very pale yellow to highlight parts of the bone that got a little more light.  Shadowing around the skull also helped.

Plus a little green on the teeth and chin and it was done!  

Then the foreground:  I liked the contrast of the little pink flowers so I added them in two shades with a few different colors of green. 

Framing forced me to cut away quite a bit from the sides but I had a lovely 8 x 10 frame (no glass) that I wanted to use.

And it was done!

Wow, what a thrill!  What a hush!  This was at a level I didn't think I was quite ready for so I'm very pleased with the result.  What a confidence booster!

It all began with making a swan couple from the book Needle Felting Winter by Rachel Austin.  Now that I had these swans, where should I keep them?  In a pond of course, but I wanted one that would hang on the wall.

I made a glorious mess pulling out all my gorgeous fibre to pick out the best colors. (Ohhh, fibre!)  I had a picture from a children's book for inspiration and I wanted their home to be a hazy and hot Summer day.

First:  the logistics.  I found a good, deep wood frame with no glass.  How would they be able to sit in their pond in a frame?  There would have to be 3D and 2D parts merged together.  So first to make the ledge the swans would be secured to:

I cut foam to fit into the frame and sewed the layers together.  Then I started felting! 

This 3D part is the water under the swans, going down to the sediment at the pond's bottom. 

Next the 2D part was mapped out, the hazy sky, light blue pond and still lush green field around it.

It came together really nicely!  

I added the hint of a fish behind the weeds and a paper frog and dragonfly.  And thanks to my sister for reminding me that there needed to be shadows under the swans!

And then it was time to frame the piece... this was tricky.  I had to stitch the 2D part to cardboard that I cut to fit the frame so that the fibre wouldn't buckle...  

...then glued a clean piece of cardboard over that to make a nice clean back.  

And it was finally finished!  

It was June 20 so the piece is named Solstice Swans,

enjoying each other's company in their own little paradise.