Facebook

As you probably realize, I can be a bit slack when it comes to posting on this blog. But if you do want regular updates on what Felted Thoughts is up to and what I have been making and selling then the best place to go is the Felted Thoughts Facebook page. Its getting fairly popular now and I post on it almost daily. There's photo albums for all the different things I have made, because I don't post photos of everything here. I also update on what fairs I will be at so if you want to come and see them in the flesh then watch me on Facebook for news on all that sort of stuff too. It's also the best place for contacting me,
other than emailing me but all my contact details and
information are on there so head on over :)

http://www.facebook.com/FeltedThoughts

Gaga

The day after Boxing day I decided I wanted to do something completely different and try and make a celeb felt. So, at 1am (I was getting obsessed and decided sleep was less important) I got to work on making a felt of Lady Gaga's Born This Way video look. I was quite pleased with it but obviously it's not perfect. You can see who it is and I guess in felt she was always going to look a bit like a muppet puppet. She took me hours to do though but it's all good practice :)

New dimensions

After Christmas I needed to have a big think about what else I could sell other than tree decorations. I had had a few friends ask me to make animals for them, and on Boxing Day I went into felting over drive felting for 14 hours solid using these as an excuse to practice making sculptural 3D felts. I had never done this before and when studying art for me Btec and Degree, I was always a massive failure at sculpture, but I was amazed because these felt pieces turned out so well! They were so cute and quirky and just how I pictured them when I began making them.
The first one I made was a pink squid for a friend who likes sea life. A lot of people have asked if I make flat felt, stuff it and stitch it but I don't. The whole thing is felted wool fibres. If you cut them in half down the centre they would be matted felt clumps all the way through.
After making the squid I made a flamingo for myself, which isn't really 3D as I wanted to try turn him into a brooch but he isn't just a flat image, there is definitely depth to him.

But the 3D felt I was most proud of at the time was the fox head I made for Emma at Tall Fox Dot. He's slightly bigger than my fist and has such a cute little face. She was so pleased with him when she received it. It took me three and a half hours of stabbing with my felting needle, and I had a little accident and put the needle right through my finger at one point resulting in a lot of blood and a few queezy feeling people who had witnessed it, but I just soldiered on like a trooper! :oP

Christmas 2011

Just as I did the year before, I decided to make a new series of Christmas decorations to sell. 2010's decorations were all 2D squares with pictures felted onto them. They looked good but I wanted to go step further this time and create characters and give them a bit more oomph with some 3D features. So I began by making father christmas's with bulgy noses and I only loosely felted his beard so it was left fluffy. I also made snow man with carrot noses that stuck out and christmas pudding with berries. They looked good and I have sold a few so I was pleased. Then I decided to make some baby penguins after seeing a trailer for Happy Feet 2 and they were soooo popular :) He had a little round bulgy beak and looked very cute.

When placing orders, a few people asked me if I could put names or dates on to the decorations so I bought a few felt heart tags (I wouldn't normally buy them but I didn't have much time) and felted '2011' onto them and and hung them from the bottom of the character. With the names, I felted them onto the main part of the decoration. Most people wanted penguins so it was usually across their belly.

I had a large order of ten dated decorations. The pic below shows the collection of them together :)

Felted Thoughts

I have had a busy few months! As planned when I last posted (3 months ago!!), I have got myself back together and Felted Thoughts is up and running and I am spewing out felts left right and centre! The quality of what I make has improved immensely and they have even stepped into three dimensions.
Anyway, today I will begin posting about everything that I've been doing. I've decided to do a separate post for each section just for my own organisation and understanding really. Plus it would be easier if I want to link someone to a particular piece of information or photo etc. :)

Not sure if I mentioned it before but I have a Felted Thoughts Facebook page which is where I update almost daily about what I've been making and doing so hop on over there and give me a 'like' :) and say hello!

New Start

Right. I'm back guys! 

It's been a crazy few months since I last posted. I've had a lot of changes and faf going on, which meant I lost my focus slightly and neglected my drawing and my felts and all the creative things I love doing and was determined to use to get me places and out of this boring little rut I have slipped in to! 

Anyway, the last two weeks or so I have been slooooowly busting out and drawing a wee bit more. Just a few doodles and quick sketches in a little sketchbook I bought from Paperchase (a a5 version of the last one I bought from there.) I have also been asked to draw a portrait of a dog for someone so I have been practising for that a little bit. But this morning I woke up feeling so fed up and bored of my days. My hours have been reduced at work so basically 4 days a week I'm just floating around, bored out of my brain, wanting to do more. But all my belongings are all over the place, and my felting bits and bobs are off in another village so even though I've been wanting to do that I've been too lazy to go get them and lug them back on the train. 

But... like I said, today I am feeling so fed up of things being like that! This time last year I had so many dreams of getting Felted Thoughts going as a business, I had people willing to help, I had money leant to me to get supplies and I started banging out so many little handmade felts. I had lots of orders for them and sold a few but then things turned poo and I lost such a good opportunity. So I'm going to drag it back! 

My plan for today is after a hunt for a job that I'm better suited to (didn't really have much luck on that!), write up a list of felted pieces I could make and who I could sell them to, hunt for any craft fayres that are occurring over the next year, finish setting up my Felted Thoughts Etsy shop, have a nose at what other people are doing with this sort of thing and then if I have time, hop on the train and go and fetch my wool and needles. If I don't have time I will go to town and buy some. I need some new needles anyway. 

Oh and I keep getting told to watch Kirstie's Home Made Home because she's been doing needle felting and entered competitions with it. I didn't really want to at first because I thought she would just been teaching you how to do it and obviously I know that already but the competition part of it has made me prick me ears so try fit that in over the next 2 days as well. 

Street Art In Canterbury

Recently, I have been spotting a lot of pavement drawings around town. I'll normally spot them about 7:30 in the morning, on my way to work, or I'll spot them in the evenings on my way home and therefore rarely get to see the masters of these creations. But I love how they are always so vibrant and I think they cheer up the city, which recently seems to have got a bit grey and un-loved (council cut backs? who knows! We didn't even have Christmas light up last year! At one time they would have put on a huge Leicester Square style celebration with the local radio station and celebrities from the panto doing the big switch on!).
They started appearing about a year ago when I spotted a drawing of the Mona Lisa with Pudsey Bear outside Hotel Chocolate (which therefore means it must have been for Children In Need in October!), shortly followed by a huge memorial for a local student, if I remember rightly, who had passed away. Various people had drawn something on different paving slabs outside of the library. It was quite eye catching!
More recently I have been seeing drawings of cartoon and game chracters dotted here and there. I was lucky enough to briefly watch one man drawing Taz at the bottom of the main high street. Which was good because he's my brothers favourite cartoon character!

The ones that I enjoy most at the moment though are ones drawn by a homeless man who sits at the end of the bridge facing the train station. Every morning I see what he had been drawning the day before and for weeks I contemplated photographing them. And I really wish I had! He's done the smurfs, flowers, faces... but more recently its always the same thing, and their not as good as they once were. Che Guevara, and a funny monstery looking thing along with a plea for money.
I've never seem him there though.

I just hope the snobby people that our city seems to be full of, who write to the newpaper all the time (complaining for example that Canterbury is too good for a poundland!), don't fight to get these removed!

Felting Machine Disaster!

Good news!! I finally sorted out some bits in my room and am now able to sit in front of my felting machine!! Hurrah!! I finally got round to doing it on Thursday and even began to create myself a little felty/ arty space, sticking a few bits up on the wall and putting all my pens and such in a jar next to my machine along with a pile of sketchbooks. I was so happy! It's been such a long time! My intention was to finally begin the felt I had promised to make Anni all those months ago (I'm so glad she is a patient lady!). Before starting that however,  I thought I would quickly make another fruity themed felt like I had intended on doing a while ago. The last couple I made were tiny so I did them by hand but I thought I would try and make a larger one this time that I could use for a keyring, so that I could settle back into the flow of the machine. I decided on a strawberry, took some red wool fibres out of my magic bag of wool, loosened it up slightly and shaped it as much as I could. I put it on the machine, under the needles, lowered the needles down, pressed my foot on the peddle for what was only a matter of seconds and CRUNCH! Three needles had snapped! Bad Times!

I have had a lot of trouble with the needles breaking since I bought the machine. The first five that were in there I put down to being ex-display and there for they had been used and weakened already. But the five that I had in there this time were the brand new ones that came with it so I was rather annoyed. Especially as three went in one go! So I spent about half an hour unscrewing the foot, unscrewing each broken needle, replacing it and screwing it all back together again. I was only able to replace two of the needles because I don't have any more left. But I have used it with only 3 or 4 needles before and it still works fine. So I carried on felting the strawberry.
I was going for maybe 5 minutes and the shape was just starting to come together, when I felt a tug. So I stopped what I was doing and slowing pulled my felt to the side and a huge chunk of it had caught up in the holes underneath the needles and torn out, so it had a hole in the middle of it. I pulled the piece out with some tweezers and had a look inside the machine, cleared out everything that was in there and tried again, but the same thing kept happening, chunks were just being pulled out and getting caught up in the holes! I really don't understand why but my only thought was that it could be that the quality of the needles isn't up to scratch. I'm hoping this is the case because that can be easily sorted but we shall see! I'll keep you posted! But I was very disappointed because I had been waiting so long to use the machine and had only been going a few minutes and now I have to stop until I'm able to get some new needles! Typical!

Tall Fox Dot

Friday night saw the last fashion show of my friend and her college BA group. They had already held a show in Brick Lane but this show was held on campus in Ashford. I was really impressed by the standard of all the pieces! But obviously I was mostly there to support Emma, who we gave a big cheer when she came out at the end! I went there with Alma and Lin, who is Ricks Mum. Lin has MS and is in a wheelchair so there was a bit of heave ho-ing when we got in the marquee so we could sit down,
but once we were sorted we actually had a pretty good view (around the back of a twitchy white haired man's head!) from the second row. The girl in the (blurry) picture is modelling one of Emma's dresses. Em is starting up the Tall Fox Dot label I mentioned in a previous post. My favourite of her pieces was a hooded dress with lazer cut out detailing down the sleeves (right), and I'm really pleased for her because she's had someone interested in buying it! :) >>>>>

She's worked sooo hard on this collection and deserves to become famous from it! So look out for the name! Emma Foxley- Tall Fox Dot!
Her other designs can be seen by clicking here >>>> CLICK!!<<<<<

Another name to look out for is Heather Blair, who designed and made this awesome blue coat...
I just wish my photos had turned out better!

Fruity Bits!

A week ago I was in Accessorize with my friend Alma, discussing things that I could felt and sell. We were coming up with all sort of silly things, as usual, but we kept spotting all these cute fruity pieces in the shop and were getting waaaaay too excited about it! Espescially the little bracelets and earrings! Then Alma suggested that maybe I could try and felt some little charms and with fruit being in for SS11 I thought it was a good plan!
Alma makes fab little pin cushions and made me an uber cute water melon one with an ice cream patterned wrist strap and a teddy bear shaped button. I love it and suddenly love water melon things!! So this was my main inspiration for my first fruity felt! I drew a few ideas in my trusty little sketchbook and searched through my wool for some colours. I was thinking I could make some large versions and turn them into keyrings. I think they'd look good! The charms are small so I'll have to use my little hand needle for them which is fine. But I'll try do some larger ones on my machine! I haven't used my it for a little while. Which is really bad! It's just that we're in the process of trying to reorganise our room and theres so much stuff piled up on the chair and the floor in front of it that it's kinda difficult for me to get too :( But I'm determined to get the rubbish sorted out this week so I can sit and have a massive go on it fairly soon!


So, anyway, here is my first tiny little fruity felt I've made! It took just under an hour to do using my single hand needle. It could do with a little bit of neatening up but here it is... I quite like it :) I need to start using my proper camera more! I took this photo on my phone and it's quite a grainy image and made the melon look a bit rough, but it gives you the idea :)
I just need to add a couple of jump rings. What do you think? I think I'm going to try make a slice of orange next!! I'm hoping to end up with a whole felted fruit salad!

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Bunny! (not sure why the first paragraph is a link)

Last night I attempted to make a rabbit keyring as a birthday present for someone. It was based on a picture of their pet rabbit. However I didn't realised that I haven't got any light brown wool left. So I had a rummage and, as advised by Rick, I went for a sort of burgandy colour as the base instead. Not sure how well this worked. We have been wondering if maybe it looks more like a dog? I like the little sequin heart nose though. But Im not sure. Its cute.... but maybe a bit alieny? Yeh. An alien dog! lol. Or a rabbit? What do you think? It took me a couple of hours to make.



My friend, Anni, has commissioned me to make her a felt of one of her wedding photos! I'm really looking forward to starting this! It's been a while since I've been able to get stuck into something like this and the photo felts are what I like doing the most. Before I start to felt the pictures from the photos, I like to draw them a couple of times in different ways so that I can look at the picture more and pick up as much detail as I can and get an idea of the shapes and proportions. The photo shows the first drawing I made along side the original photo.

Can't wait to get started :)

Tootsies, Videos and Machines

On Monday I went into a shop in town called The Sewing Shop. My friend, Emma, suggested that I enquired about a felting machine because she thought it would help me with what I do. The lady showed me the one that they had and let me have a go on it. It's AMAZING!! It would help me so much! It's so much quicker! I couldn't do everything with it,such as small details and the pictures on my photo felts, but I could do the bases for my felts quickly which could knock off a few days and it would also mean I could make my accessories quicker to build up more stock and to a higher standard! I'm hoping that within the next week I can get one! The lady said that I can go back with my wool fibres and try it out again to see if I still like it. Which I am doing tommorrow! But ooooo! I'm so excited about it!

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The other day I made a video on youtube to demonstrate how I make my felts. It's not a brilliant quality and I'm not sure my camera liked how fast I was moving but you get the idea... It does go on a bit long and you can here my fiance in the background laughing at The Fast Show in places but if you are interested in how I make my felt then here you go.... :)

Em's simple need felting video.

Key Ring Numero Two!

Just a quick post to show the second keyring I have just finished. It's a lot bigger than the last one (Mimi) and much neater. maybe because I am more awake this time? I duno! I've also added a bit of bling to this one too... What do we think? I'm guna try some different designs tommorrow.














I've taken a photo of her next to Mimi to as a comparison. You can see the difference... though the green one was missng the bling at that point!

I found my sketchbook!! WOO!

So... Here are my very simple and quick doodles of keyring ideas.... Obviously I'll be doing more but you can see where Mimi came from! She actually popped into my head when I was selecting some beads in the shop!

Im going to try another in a moment.


The fried egg is rather random.... but why not?! I'm aiming for quirky!

Thought I'd post this pic too... I was trying to give my friend, Anni, some tips on drawing portraits. So I drew this diagram uber quick.... Think it helped?!



Oh and yes... I did draw the rupert in the background! It was a present for my fiance because he loves him! :)

Keyring Numero One!

Last night I stayed up late to try and attempt to make my first keyring. Earlier in the day I had gone into a little shop in town called The Bead Pot to gather some bits and bobs. I bought a few keyring hoops (not sure what their proper name is but I mean the ones that you can split and attach to your keys), one belt loop clasp thing and some jump rings and thought I'd give them a go and see how they look. I also spotted some rings with little holes in which I thought I could try and sew some felted pieces to, and some hair grips which I will try and do the same thing with! My stock is slowly growing!

I also went and bought my self an uber cheap sketchbook for 99p which I have started to fill with ideas. I was going to post some pictures of my quick little doodles but the book has done a runner somewhere and I can't find it! Grr!

Anyway, I have a taken a photo if my first keyring on my DS as its quicker to upload it. The quality isn't brilliant but I'll take a better photo soon...

Here's Mimi...
She does need a wee bit of tidying up around the edges and I haven't properly trimmed the threads at the back yet where I have stitched on the bead and around the edge of her dress... but you get the idea :)

I've named her Mimi after me... cheekily! But Shes my first and she looks like a Mimi, and that's my mums pet name for me and has been since I was little. LOL... so yeh :) What do folk think anyway? Feedback?