Heads up!

It's been nearly ten years since I picked up a felting needle and created my first little rabbit. Since then, I have created countless animal and bird designs, mostly to sell,  but also for magazine and book patterns. Not  to mention easy projects for workshops. And to be honest, I came to a temporary halt with it all. Just after Andy died, four years ago, I had to apply myself to writing thirty simple patterns for my book and since then, I have struggled to come up with anything really new that excited me.

Add to this that needle felting has exploded in popularity and there are thousands of 'cute things' being offered up for sale, often at ridiculously low prices that I cannot compete with. And I do have to try to make a living somehow. Business says that when something isn't selling anymore, it's time to switch up and change.

So I've been slowly working through a design process, as I was taught to do when I was an art student. While I've had to jump out of my comfort zone to some extent, I am also going back to ideas I had many years ago. I have watched the craft of needle felting grow over the years, and I now want to move my own work upwards.   

I started out last year by making copies of antique ceramic Staffordshire animals , but they are incredibly time consuming and although they may seem expensive, the prices still don't reflect the 40-50 hours of work put into them. And as they are as exact as I can make them, there is no room left for imagination. 

Then I started looking at antique milliner's hat stands, which are simple 'heads' made of painted papier mache; I found myself  inspired again. I began my first head a few weeks ago and it was a welcome challenge. 

The first one, 'Charlotte' was made very much in the traditional design and I have to admit that simple as she looks, it was a steep learning curve and a return to my art student days to remember how to construct a face. As you can see, it's a miniature version of the real thing, which would have been life sized.

The next two heads, 'Amelia' and 'Cordelia' were also in the traditional folk style. With these first three heads I tried to emulate the flat, painted effect of the originals.

The next challenge was to make a male head, 'Mr George' the strong man and I started to move away from the flat paint effect, with a raised quiff.

'Eloise' indulged my love of all things 'Versailles'.

And by the time I made 'Emily', I had gone off the path of the painted effect and was  already planning my next series of heads.

If you're an artist trying to scrabble together some kind of living, it is a huge thing to change your known products but it's a risk I have to take. Times change and I'm a different person to the one who made that sweet little rabbit back in 2008. My life is also 'another country'.

While I'm working on the second series, the first batch of heads are now up for sale in my Etsy shop, here in the 'Miniature heads' section. With signed tags and gift boxes.

In the meantime, animals and birds are beginning to creep back in. It was probably inevitable.