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!

The story of a fox

In June 2020 I ordered an intriguing needlefelting kit from Fibrecraft, a Mississauga based online business that sells a nice range of quality needlefelting supplies.  It was my first ever order from this small business and I was impressed by the entire experience, from an easy to use website, straight-forward ordering procedure, super fast delivery and well-packaged products (there was even a little extra "gift", which was a treat!).  In these COVID times when visiting a farm to buy rovings isn't possible it was nice to find a great Canadian online spot!

Fabian the Fox was just what I needed:  a challenge!  I've completed simpler critters but nothing at this level.  I was eager to get started...

First the instructions were detailed in how to create the wire armature.  Then I started to build up the core body, and then legs.  Instructions were step-by-step but I feel some experience is needed as it's not aimed at beginners.

I have to mention that the fibres were delicious to work with, so soft and felting quite easily. (And plentiful:  there was enough for the fox with some left over.)

Once the basic body was created...

It was time to work on the face.  Eye holes were created and beads inserted to hold the positions.  This was well described... but the nose?  The instructions left you to figure it out on your own.  I ended up with a rather large nose.

Then the black "mascara" was added along with the mouth and other facial markings.

 

Ears were made from scratch... with good instructions on how to do this.

And eyes were created from felt too!  That was an amazing feat, I thought!  I was impressed with how they turned out!  Again, though, the instructions were a little short:  how do you make smooth eyeballs?  I found it was very helpful to wet and role the eyes in my hands to get nice, smooth balls.  

The next step was not so much fun:  adding the black to the paws to build up the feet.  Because of the wire armature, there was no room to poke without hitting the wire.  I broke two needlefelting needles trying to get the black fibres to stay in place.  Also, the instructions at this phase were very short and didn't supply the necessary details on how to create the feet.  I looked online for reference images of fox feet for help.

Luckily I had other needles and could keep going...

Until they were finally done!

Now it was time to make the fox furry!  The thighs and hind quarters were done first, adding long fibres and then trimming them down to the desired length.  The chest and tummy followed and finally the tail.

The reverse needle was used at this stage.  Here the instructions were good on how to blend out lines and add just a bit of fluffiness to even out the fox's coat.

And Sabian was finished!  I think my fox is more a female then Fabian so Sabian seems to suit her.

Yes, it took me 6 months to finish her!  But there were LOTS of interruptions!

Ta da!!  

Aside from the one shortcoming in that the instructions could be a bit more thorough, I would certainly do another Chicktin Creations kit.  The unicorn looks like fun...

Mother Nature's palette!

We spent a week as tourists!  Well, it's the best way to learn so we can talk with our guests about all the great things to see and do in our area!  And the fall colours were absolutely at their peak, stunning with massive rolling clouds sometimes threatening rain.  Alton Mills was nice to see (good chili!) but the Town of Erin surprised us with its main street of shops and many trails.  We will definitely be going back with the dogs!  We also hiked two trails on Sandy Hills Drive that were very nice. (More to follow in the next post!)

But what I most wanted to share in this post was the brilliant wash of colours in all that we did.  As if the brilliant trees weren't enough, on our drive to Alton Mills along Hwy #18 we passed a canola field, glowing yellow!  This is not our picture but is very similar to what we enjoyed:

 WOW!

And here's a rainbow in a box!  Wellington Fibres on Middlebrook Road just outside of Elora has a great shop right on the farm where you can see the goats in the field.  My sister is needle-felting and shared some of the rovings she bought for her projects.  Wow, what a dazzling selection, thank you again Doris!  If you're into knitting, spinning, weaving or needle-felting, you'll love visiting Wellington Fibres!