Derpy, Ditsy Doo, Dr Whooves assistant

I guess the title doesn't make a lot of sense if you're not a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan. But you don't have to be for this post, I promise. It's just that I got my first introduction to needle felting on a MLP:FIM site and was determined to at least try to make a pony.












And what pony better to try than the wall-eyed, clumsy, but absolutely adorable Derpy.

I loved how she turned out and how much I learned on this little model, first one with "seperate parts" (ie wings), a wire armature inside (ok, a non-pipecleaner wire armature) and non-felted or at least very softly felted "hair"










I wish I had progression photos of how I made here, but if you're interrested at all have a look at the wonderful tutorial on Deviant Art by the-pink-dragon for how to make/use armatures (for a pony) with needle felting.

The hair I sortof made up as I went along, including my first hand blend - as you can see her mane is not entirely evenly coloured. Now I have proper blending brushes (will do a later post on this), but I honestly think I'll need to get into dyes as well at some point.

Baby dragon

I'm a huge fan of dragons, all sorts of dragons (but western fantasy, not easter worm-like), little ones, big ones, flying ones, sitting ones.. ok you get the picture. I'm also quite fond of making dragons and here is a little one I made for my sister

 This one is about 15cm high and made from the most amazing sculpting clay I have used. Its called super sculpey and is a fleshy colour to start with. You can bake it in a normal oven at 130 C (yay no need for a kiln!) and is soooo responsive.

From the front on this photo she looks a little evil, but I just couldn't get a good angle to get her from the front

I've started with some tinfoil as an armature/base because this kind of polymer clay apparently shouldn't be too thickly applied. The scales was created by taking a bit of netting fabric and rubbing it into the clay and then pulling it out to leave a nice patter behind.

 I painted her with purple and pearlesent white and aded some black to the details. I also used some ink to bring out the scales - a technique I learned when painting miniatures which, sadly I haven't done in a while, but I only have so much time. And besides I'm easily distracted by new projects

Needle felted polar bear

So about 8 months ago I started a new hobby: Needle Felting. What is that you might ask, as I did myself. Well the best I can describe it is sculpting with wool. In essence you use barbed needles to tangle wool fibres (or any other natural fibre) together to form 3D shapes.

Here is my first project (well the first one I was willing to admit to). It not a large polar bear, but I learned a lot about sculpting with needles in this one. He's made from white and black merino wool over a pipecleaner armature.

Re-purposing

So clearly I'm not putting up photos every week anymore, not that I don't still occasionally take out my camera, but as usual I have gotten side tracked by other things in life and recently my husband said to me, "Why don't you put your latest craft stuff on your blog?"

And seeing how much I enjoy reading other people's craft blogs I thought why not. Maybe no-one will read it, but it makes for a nice diary anyway and I'm not likely to loose this like a file on my harddive.

So over the next while I will put on some of my crafting stuff until I'm caught up to what I'm currently working on and re-purpose this as a general creative blog. Once its up to date, I'll update it as and when I've got a project I want to share.