Quaranteeny Art Show

I had way too much fun entering the “Quaranteeny Art Show” competition earlier this month. Everything about this contest appealed to me: tiny art, to-scale models, animal figurines. @tinyartshow is one of my all-time favorite instagram accounts to follow and they inspired me to go smaller with my needle felted landscapes. I recently launched a new “mini” landscape size (3”x3”). When I saw Tiny Art Show was hosting a tiny art show competition (during COVID-19 Quarantine), I knew it would be a fun & imaginative way to play around with my own art for an afternoon and more importantly, an excuse to make miniature stuff to go with it all.

I had my collection of 8 wool paintings made & framed fairly quickly. I’ve been needle felting larger landscapes for awhile now, so these little guys were done in record time. However, I needed a gallery setting and a scale figure for the contest, and that took a lot of thinking and experimenting. I’ll admit I wandered around the house for a bit, looking at corners, ledges, any flat surface, really. I finally settled on the kitchen counter because the white quartz countertop looked like terrazzo at the scale I needed, plus the under-cabinet lighting would provide semi-realistic shadows. I propped up two pieces of white foam core and mounted my tiny pieces of art work.

I decided to go a little further with my to-scale gallery. I added some pedestals and a tiny vase, and made miniature stanchions using dowels, red yarn, and thumb tacks. Now, for my scale figure. It HAD to be a sheep! After all, the art in this exhibit is made entirely of wool. I used a little lamb figurine I got at the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair a few years ago (made by Collin’s Creatures), and set my art-loving creature in the gallery for a look around.

The collection of mini wool landscapes featured in the tiny art show has already sold out on my website and more are coming very soon! I’m thrilled with the response these tiny wool paintings have gotten so far and can’t wait to share more these with my collectors. Take a tour of the tiny gallery and experience the show for yourself!

My needle felted wool landscapes are getting smaller and smaller, and when @tinyartshow announced their art competition during the 2020 Covid-19 Quarantine, ...

Now here’s where a good thing gets even better. I submitted my work to this contest for fun, I encouraged other’s to do the same, so all in all it was a great time. But then to top it off, I won first place! I still can’t believe it. There were so many fantastic applications I actually made myself wait to look at what other’s had done until after I submitted my own because I didn’t want to get discouraged. The judges had their work cut out for them!

The Bunny Project Continues

Spring is in the air and bunnies have been spotted (both in my backyard AND in my studio)! I’m pleased to announce my next collection of needle felted animal portraits, a continuation of The Bunny Project, which is a bunny-only collection I started many years ago and add to periodically. This season’s additions are all portraits intended to be hung on a wall, and each bunny has its own personality. They’re all needle felted with dyed wool fiber, feature some sort of accessory that gives them character, and are mounted on a variety of wooden backers.

This week, I’m doing a pre-sale of the bunnies through my Instagram stories. I’ll post each one with its name, dimensions, and price, and the first person to message me with their email address (for invoicing) and shipping info, gets to adopt the bunny. The bunnies will be slightly discounted during the pre-sale and I’m offering free shipping this time as well. Whatever bunnies remain after the 24 hour pre-sale ends on Instagram will go up on the website, but they’ll be full price and I do charge shipping for website orders.

Have a look at the bunnies, pick your favorites, message me with any questions you may have, and get ready to claim yours this week. These bunnies are all one-of-a-kind, and while I can recreate some of them to a certain extent, there are elements I’ll never be able to source again (like some of the accessories or backing materials), so if you have your heart set on something in this collection and love it exactly the way it’s shown, please know I’ll most likely not make it again exactly the same way.

As always, if you have another animal or specific accessories, colors, or sizes you’re wanting for a needle felted animal portrait, I’m more than happy to do custom orders. Send me a message and let me know what you have in mind, and I’ll get back to you with a quote and estimate of delivery timeframe. There’s never any pressure to buy – quotes are free! If you decide to proceed with the commission, I do ask for payment upfront, and I’ll always send you a photo of the finished item before shipping.

My ongoing series of needle felted bunny portraits is getting 12 new additions this week! Here's a sneak peek at the new bunnies coming soon. They'll be avai...

Wool Landscapes Inspired by Movies

Movies & needle felting - they’ve always gone hand in hand for me. I watch a lot of movies (and TV series, documentaries, etc.) while I work on my needle felting projects. The couch is really the most comfortable place to work in this particular media because I’m doing the felting in my lap rather than a table top. Recently I took this movie & felting combo one step further - I let the movies inspire the needle felting!

Many of my favorite movies have distinct visual styles and memorable color stories. For example, The Darjeeling Limited, one of my all time favorite Wes Anderson films, has a bright but tattered feel that is distinctly vintage India. The Fall is a movie with one of the most saturated and whimsical color palettes I’ve ever seen, and even though the landscapes are actual places and the characters are actors, nothing from the dream / story scenes looks like it could possibly be real. In stark contrast, the movie The Road, based on the apocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy, is so washed out and faded, there’s barely any color at all. I love how color and composition can be so much more than the background.

In addition to the way color, costume, and set design each have a tremendous impact on films, sometimes the physical location is enough to inspire awe, all on it’s own. Legends of the Fall is one of my all time favorite stories, regardless of the setting. However, the stunning mountains & scenery, certainly help solidify this one’s spot on my favorite’s list for 20+ years and counting. The same is true of the rugged Alaska wilderness setting in Into the Wild. Even though the true story is ultimately heartbreaking, it’s also beautiful.

Using my favorite movies as inspiration for wool landscapes was a great option for the cold and dreary winter months. I’d much rather hunker down and stay indoors when the weather is chilly like this! Some of the other movies that inspired these recent landscapes are The Village and E.T. (fun fact: E.T. was one of the very first & only VHS tapes my family owned in the mid 80’s!). I’ve seen these movies so many times, I knew exactly what scene I wanted to represent in my own work well before re-watching them for the umteenth time.

So what are some of your favorite movies? I would love your recommendations. Who knows - maybe they’ll inspire some future felted landscapes!

Introducing Wool Color Studies

Back in October, I took a week-long rug hooking course at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. I had big plans for this new skill, plans that involved combining other materials and techniques, specifically needle felting. I’ve been needle felting for over 10 years now, and have fallen in love with the texture of wool, so the thought of achieving a whole new level of texture through rug hooking was extremely tempting. During my week at the Folk School, I tried out some preliminary pieces where I hooked wool fabric strips using traditional rug hooking techniques, but I intentionally left gaps and came back to fill those in with needle felted roving. I really loved the combo – it was everything I hoped it would be!

Fast forward to late January. Where did the last 3+ months go? Oh yeah, the holidays! The Folk School feels like ages ago, but I haven’t forgotten my original mission, despite the craziness of the 4th quarter. After returning home from Brasstown in October, I used the remaining funds from my Metropolitan Arts Council grant to purchase the basic supplies needed for rug hooking – a frame, 2 hooks, foundation cloth, curved scissors, etc. This stash of new supplies and tools has been sitting in my studio, waiting for me to return to a normal schedule. Now that the holidays are behind me, and I’m back from my big wholesale tradeshow (Atlanta Gift Show), it’s finally time to dive into this new crafting realm.

I started out small – nothing larger than 8” or so. Practicing on a reasonable scale is purely for my own sanity. If a piece isn’t working, it doesn’t feel like a huge let down when it’s smaller. Plus, I wanted to try out a bunch of different ideas so that’s a lot more manageable when I can finish a piece in a few hours rather than investing in something for a few weeks only to discover I don’t like how it turned out. I’m a beginner in this new medium, and I want to set myself up for success and allow for exploration.

I’m excited to share this new series of mixed media color studies. This first collection is inspired by the colors of gemstones like yellow topaz, aquamarine, kyanite, obsidian, and rose quartz. Each hoop art piece is really about exploring texture and features an overall monochromatic color palette. Each piece has a dyed wool backdrop that sets the tone for the color palette, but also acts as a fantastic foundation cloth. I wasn’t thrilled with the primitive linen look that’s traditionally used for rug hooking, so I tried out a few other options before discovering washed wool fabric. It’s way more expensive to work with, but I love love love how it looks!

Each hoop art piece has rug hooked wool strips, needle felted roving, punch needled yarn (wool, acrylic, chenille, and others) and I also flipped the piece several times throughout so that I can showcase both the “right” and the “wrong” side of the loops. I think it’s so cool how the “wrong” side of the loop can look – it’s so much tighter and shorter, but then the “right” side is so plush and has incredible density. To me, there’s no right or wrong side – it’s all about which texture you’re going for. As for me, I want ALL of the different textures represented!

All wool color studies are available on my website under Fiber Art / Textile Art and I’m also offering a custom option – choose your size and color palette and I’ll make it just for you!

Winter in the Woods Collection

My first series of needle felted animal portraits for 2020 is coming soon! I don’t get to make these portraits very often and when I do, they sell so quickly it’s a bit of a blur. I’m excited to share these 12 woodland creatures who are all bundled up for the winter season but I know they won’t last. I’ve got bears in hats, owls in scarves, chipmunks in earmuffs, and I had way too much fun putting together this little trailer that my husband helped fiml in the woods behind our house. 

This new series of needle felted animal portraits all bundled up for the the winter will be available starting tomorrow night at 7PM on Instagram. Follow @onceagainsam for details and a chance to snag one of these rare creations!

Follow @onceagainsam on Instagram for details about adopting one of these woodland creatures. As with my past animal portrait collections, I will be listing them for sale on Instagram and the first person to message me with their email address for payment gets the piece. 

These quirky felted portraits range in price from $50 to $125 depending on size.

Fun fact: my talented mother-in-law hand know those tiny hats! Aren’t they just the cutest!?!