Apoxy Sculpt + Little Miss No Name doll+ needle felting+beading

I spent a good 15 hours removing her old hair and rooting in mohair with front highlights of silk to make my no "Little Miss No Name" doll into an alien . I also replaced the eyes and made lids, cheeks and pointed ears out of Apoxy sculpt . I can tell you now that I am going to have a very fun winter with this stuff . It works great on the plastic and latex doll .  I made a huge mistake rushing the process and not spending more time blending in the edges . (live and learn_ ) She has some lovely fur lashes and is painted with multiple layers of blued wood glue with a sealer ....all in all, I give myself a C for end result but an A for patience in painting and rooting hair since the whole process took most of the week . I have several other less expensive dolls that I plan on being a bit more creative with horns, textured skin and layers of leather and fur .

 The previous week I made her two fuzzy friends

 .....and beaded a few needle felt bangles which I made several years ago (talk about WIP),

I also made small steps toward opening my Etsy shop by joining stamps.com so I can weigh and mail out packages . I still am not satisfied with the tags I have for my animals so I have some supplies coming in a few weeks that I hope they will work .

Hope all of you are still exploring and enjoying making things....when it comes to crafting , the more I learn, the more I want to know so it will great to play around a bit more with the new sculpting medium and I have a cheap little rotary tool winging it's way here, so stay tuned

Furry and Fiesty Needle Felt

I missed the best photo light of the day but wanted to share my latest "needle felties" before I had to go back to work for the week . I think I may be busy tomorrow . I have an appointment with my BF's "tax guy" and was hoping to write off business expenses for all the wool I bought this year but......I am a cronically disorganized person who hates businessy things, so don't know if I will actually make it to the appointment . I kept most of my reciepts this year but hunting them down and adding them up hurts my brain .

first nuno felting, first pro-reactive silk dye and a few new critters

This was a weekend of first for me .

Jane from Glorious Hats on Etsy) came down from Bemidji and stayed the weekend . Our friend Eileen joined us for a bit of chatter and some dinner but had to leave before we broke out the dyes . I had previously ordered some dyes from Etsy and some Silk chiffon from Thai silks but was waiting for just the right time to play . Unfortunately, the right time was the night before e were to all go take a nuno felt class at The Fiber Studio in MPLS . It was a bit of rushing to get the silks done in time for class but we did manage to dye them up .

The dying itself was several steps of mixing and experimenting with the colors and I really had no idea what I was doing . I had bought a book but it mostly focused on painting fabrics . Our work space was also limited so we couldn't get the whole 72' scarf on our work table, leading to some dripping . All in all, it did give me an idea of the basics and I will feel more confident next time I break out the dyes .

The following day, we all met at The Fiber Studio for the Nuno felting class . I'll provide a link to Jane's blog when she finishes blogging so you can see the scarf she was working on and her perspective on the experience....

http://glorioushats.blogspot.com/2009/09/i-flew-coop.html

I would say that we both thought the class was very relaxed and well taught and we both plan on playing with more nuno in the future . I think Eileen would concur and hope she will also share a picture of her scarf on her blog (hint, hint Eileen) . We both used a tencil/merino blend for our nuno and were pleased with the results . It added a lot of shine and texture to the scarfs .

The actual process was not as messy as had originally feared but it does take several hours of rolling before we reached a felted texture we liked . I will definitely be working more with wet felting now that I have a better idea of what to do and when I my fingers need a break from the needle poking they endure to make my bags and sculptures .
I added about 4" of just the tincel/merino to the ends of the chiffon to see what it looked like and it turned out surprisingly light but durable so I hope to make some scarves and bags out of just this material, sans chiffon .

I'm still working on learning to make smaller needle felt critters . This shy little rodent is Gilbert and I will be making him his own wet felt rug to stand on....I think I will include either a rug or scarf of wet felt with each of my little critters . I think the contrast of natural animal fibers and brighter wet felting will be a nice contrast
I worked on Theador for about 12 hours yesterday because I wanted to experiment with adding a patch of imitation fur (it's on his back) with the needle felt to see how it works . This will take a bit more practice to develop a method of blending but I think it will work . He still needs a bit of work on his eye lids and a main trim .

The tiny pup was a gift for my BF's birthday because he likes the miniatures....there was a bit of blood lose and swearing involved in his construction...(I poke to hard) but I think he turned out better then my first few I tried .