Anatomy of a Kit

I thought it might be interesting to show my thought processes when creating a new needle felting kit.....
First I think about all the kits I SHOULD be making...People are always asking me if I make dog kits and frog kits, for example...so I decided to make a Golden Labrador puppy kit....

So this is how I began:

I went to Goggle Images and found this little guy....  I don't want to steal any images so I'll add that
greenfieldpuppies.com posted this   with the title:  Rocky, Yellow Lab pupple for sale from Leola,PA

I'm sure Rocky will find a good home very quickly!  He's adorable!!

Now...I did a preliminary drawing of Rocky:

He's been drawn in red because of my animation back ground....we drew in red and then went over it in lead....red didn't show on film...now of course it had to be a certain KIND of red....Carmine Red was in demand for years in the 90's!  Scarlet red just didn't cut it :)

I scanned him into my computer again and I cleaned him up with my photoshop eraser tool and darkened the lines

I found him to be too sad and dejected so I made a few changes:

I also wanted him to be looking at us.

I'm getting there!  I wanted him to be tucked snug in a blanket....

Then I added shadows to his face where, when needle felting this guy, you put a darket colour

 And here is the finished piece.  I used my drawing almost as a paint by number kit.  He's not looking at you like I intended, but I like him anyway!

ArtFelting!

I've finally been able to play with this fabulous medium!

I decided to try a large piece....I want to do a life size zebra.  So I created this "skin" out of ArtFelt ....

 Millsy had to join in the fun!  Can you see her?

 I had no room to dunk the piece in water so I went outside on the back porch....I know now that Artfelt freezes and sticks to surfaces.....always handy to know in the future:)

 Soaked it down and wrapped it up in plastic

 Rolled up the legs first and then rolled up the body....




It was HEAVY!!!  I had to surround it with loads of towels to keep it from banging the dryer to bits during the cycle!

Below is the piece after I put it in the dryer three times for 10 minutes each time.
After drying it, I unrolled it and rerolled it in another direction.  The final time, I took the surrounding plastic off and left it loose in the outer plastic bag.....In hindsight, I think I went too far this final drying time.  It shrank quite a bit.
I've put the beginning of the felting process beside it so you can see how much it shrinks....it really does shrink alot!

Next time I think I'll make different sections of the zebra and sew them together....this guy may just become a wool carpet!