What a busy few days! Aral returned safe and well on Thursday morning, much to my relief. Of course as soon as he got home, jet lag struck and he promptly fell asleep for several hours, so it was pretty lucky that when he was at South by Southwest he had visited the Make: expo stand and brought me a needle felting kit 
:):):). You can imagine my excitement at being given this. I have been wondering about needle felting for a while now, and this little kit showing me how to make a penguin, was perfect:). So whilst Aral slept, I felted, and in just over an hour I had a little penguin to show for my work. My needle felting kit came from here.
Here he is! I called him Gwin, like penguin without the “pen”
Needle felting is really fun, you can be much more precise, and it’s nowhere near as messy as wet felting. I have been messing around with this method over the weekend, and doing some regular wet felting as well. I think the best use of needle felting is for figures, such as little animals, people, and objects, and for adding detail and motifs to larger wet felted projects. Once you get over a certain size of project, wet felting really becomes much easier. I also tried combining the techniques, so I needle felted a little purse, and then wet felted it afterwards. I finished wet felting it by hand to make sure the joins were well fused. This worked pretty well, as you have lots of control over the specifics of the item and you also have the knowledge that after the wet felting it will be much stronger.
After wet felting above, after needle felting and prepared for wet felting below. As you can see the fibers are much closer bonded above. The bubble wrap is to stop the pocket felting together, and the bubbles help with the felting.
So what else happened this weekend, well it was BarCamp Brighton2 this weekend and since Singularity was sponsoring it, we spent Friday afternoon pinning badges on little silver envelopes that were to be the schwag for the event. Friday night we met up with Serena, Zoha and Colin and went for dinner at Bill’s which was really great fun. The next morning after too many glasses of red wine at Bill’s the night before, we got a cab to Sussex University to set up the Singularity banner and to help set up the building. I didn’t enjoy the day that much, I had a super awful headache and I felt a little lost and out of place, I may try another BarCamp in the future but I’m not sure that will be too soon.
I brought a super magazine at Borders called Belle Armoire, “French for “beautiful wardrobe,” Belle Armoire® marries fabric arts with rubber stamping and embellishments–showcasing one-of-a-kind, handmade fashions and wearable-art projects”. It’s a really great inspirational magazine, and one of my favorite articles was about Lori Marsha Sandstedt a really interesting artist who is currently making new pieces from recycled clothes. Her story was a joy to read and has really made me feel good and excited about creating new things. I think I have been a little scared of making things that are maybe too unusual, in case no one is interested in them. I think this is a problem that lots of artists have, trying to cater for the greater public instead of creating what they really love. Lori Marsha has definitely inspired me to be more true to my art and I am going to challenge myself to only make things that I myself, would love and treasure from now on.
I made some flat felted pieces which I am going to turn into little pouches or purses. Keep any eye on my Etsy shop for them, should be up tomorrow evening.
I should be going for an x-ray on my hip tomorrow, but now the pain has gone I’m really putting it off. If I do make it I’ll try and take a picture of the x-ray.
Have a good week
Update : Here is a good link to get you started felting if you don't know where to start! LINK
