#liveedgeart

I decided to create a felt barn owl out of the scrap piece that I had from my lion. It was already cut in the shape that I needed, so the first step was staining it with a golden oak stain and adding poly to bring out the coppery undertones of the wood. I always finish the wood before I start felting so that I can color match my wool.

Stained and polyurethaned slab ready to go Next comes building up the head and body with core wool and a bit of wire armature. This takes a while. You need to felt it pretty solid and dry fit it into the wood as you go. I tend to sculpt with the core wool as I go, adding and dry fitting. In this case, my core wool was gray. This was only because I have a crap ton of it and not for an artistic reason!

Head and Body Build out From there, I build out feathers that match the wood. I included a picture of all of the different colors that go into a single feather. This is my favorite part of any wood and wool project. It may be why I am drawn to creating owls too. This is the second felt barn owl I have created. They are masters at camouflage! 

6 different wool color variations in a single feather

felting feathers that match the wood The final steps are layout and gluing (where felt meets wood) and then spot checking for additional ways to highlight the spalting in the wood.

Barn Owl getting finished Once I hung this sweet girl on the wall, I realized that her mate was nearby. These two remind me so much of my parents, who embody their personalized mugs (Grumpy and Happy), that I think I will name them Grandpa and Grandma. Hopefully we can convince someone to buy them together - their namesake just celebrated their 51st wedding anniversary so lots of good luck will come with them!

I found this walnut slab and thought the little ring on the top was cool. Wasn't sure what it was when I bought it but I thought it looked a little like the eye of a peacock feather.

When I started to look for inspiration around peacock feather eyes, I found this beautiful Indian blue peacock mount from Creel and Gow. I realized that the lines were similar to my slab. This became the inspiration for my piece.

First, I started with the creation of the eyes. I needle felted multiple layers and then hand embroidered a feather-like texture over the top with a combination of blue, dark teal and light teal. To finish the top of the feathers, I used brown silk yarn slightly stiffened and tied to a cotton wrapped wire.

Then I started working on the head. Lots of blending between teal and blue. The most time consuming part was the creation of the plumes - little wool tufts on silver wires.

I struggled for quite a while trying to decide how to handle the middle section. Trying hand dyed doilies and lace, as well as, a simple macrame pattern as options but not liking either. It just took away from the walnut. In the end I created small felted feathers in a U anchored with an additional eye.

The final design of the full peacock also incorporated blue glass pins (some with bead caps) that anchor the feathers for a little sparkle. I am very pleased with how striking this piece is and how a piece of walnut could transform into a full peacock!.

There has been a lovely piece of locust sitting in my shop staring at me for awhile now and it finally revealed itself as a lion head just before the holidays.

Live edge locust slab First, had my hubby stretch his bandsaw skills to give me the foundation.

Slab cut out for head Then I started on building the face and deciding how to tie it into the wood.

Lion face in felt Next came multiple batches of dreads and dry fitting. I think I created 4 batches in the end, thinking each time that I would most certainly have enough and being wrong.

Dreads on drying rack

Dry fitting Once I had enough dreads and was happy with placement, I started gluing and felting them in place. I then hung it for the first time and decided it was too heavy on the bottom left. Also realized I forgot ears!

Lion head first hanging I moved some of the longer dreads up to thin that section out and added in the ears and this is the final product. He has a lion king kind of vibe to him that I really dig!

Final felt and wood lion head Never one to waste wood, I took the bark cut off from the original locust slab and created a cute little owl with him. I call him Night Terror. Sorry I don't have any in progress shots of this one.

Today, I dropped off a hidden owl chick in a piece of locust wood that I titled Newfound Wisdom, Discovered for the MOWA Member Show. Stealing words from the MOWA site... The Members’ Show coincides with the Magic Wilderness: Dreamscapes of the Forest exhibit. This year’s theme Begin Again also contemplates how connection can reconcile the external world with the deeply personal self. Both exhibitions demarcate how Wisconsin artists have been brave enough to grow, especially over the last two years. I choose this piece because learning to felt brought out the hidden artist in me. My dedication to felting both during the pandemic and as my husband and I transitioned to empty nesters was instrumental in retaining my sanity and passion. The owl is my favorite bird and is commonly associated with Wisdom so this was a no-brainer. We start, as always, with a gorgeous piece of wood. This is a live edge locust that already had a hole in it that looked like an owl.

Live edge slab of locust I then finished the wood and started blending wool colors to get my owl feathers to match as closely as possible. Here are some photos as I constructed the owl.

I had what I thought was a finished owl hidden within but when I stood back and took pictures, I felt the owl was too brown and didn't blend well enough.

I lightened it up overall and added in some more pinks and am very happy with the final product.

I finished this northwoods headboard commission just in time for the recipients to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. What a fantastic gift to receive in their new (but not totally done) bedroom remodel in a northern Wisconsin lake cabin. We hung the headboard and took pictures and some video to help surprise them. The electricity in the room wasn't on yet so please excuse the lighting in some photos. You may recall in my previous post that this started with a large slab of spalted Elm. When I looked at this piece in the mill, I could see images of animals in it from the start. I pointed out some of the lines of the moose so you can see how my mind works.

From there, I started felting up some dimension. I wanted the felt to extend the animals from the wood so I stayed close to the wood coloring in spots and then took license with key distinctive features.

All of the animals included on the headboard are found in the northwoods of Wisconsin. I also added wire in some spots to allow for extension beyond the slab just a little. Keeping in mind that this is a headboard so I didn't want to get too crazy.

I won't have any completed projects to show you this week but that does not mean I haven't been busy - I have multiple projects in flight at the moment. Today I will give you some progress updates. Then in a future blog post we can see how drastically the final products differ from where they started from. Project 1 - Member Showcase Submission This one is due mid November and I am probably the least far on it. Oh well. I will discuss in a separate blog post how I decided on this piece based on the theme for the showcase but for now the focus is on the fact that I am making 3 owls. One of the owls is already complete and was highlighted in a previous blog. The second is started from a slab of elm that had cool lichen on the bark.

Owl out of Elm I am already on the 3rd version of the neck and head and still don't like it so stay tuned. This one will likely be a great horned owl. The third owl is not started at all yet - other than sweet talking my husband into routing out some of the wood in the middle. I plan to have an owl hiding in the slab. You can even see the outline of an owl in this piece of locust.

Locust slab

Example owl Project 2 - Woodland Headboard Commission My second project is a large 7 ft spalted elm slab that will become a headboard. I don't have great pictures of the entire thing but hopefully you can see from this photo how much movement is in this piece of wood.

Spalted Elm Slab My goal with this piece is to pull the images of animals from Wisconsin that I see hidden in the wood and build up some dimension and artistic license with felt. The first image I found was a moose.

Moose Nothing is attached yet but the antlers are wired so I will be able to pull them away from the wood for some perspective. The next animal I found is an owl (go figure). You can start to see me laying out some pieces here.

Moose and start of owl Picture the owl hunting, like in the photo below. I have been working on additional updates since but haven't photographed them on the wood again.

There are also walleye, snapping turtle, badger and rattlesnake images that I have coaxed out of the wood. I have completed the structure for the rattlesnake but the images are extremely phallic and I don't want to get flagged as a porn site so I will just wait on those until construction is a bit further along. :) This piece needs to be completed by the end of November so I will be probably be posting final pictures while eating some turkey. Project 3 - Weimaraner Commission This final project is a commission to create the bust of a beloved pet Weimaraner. These are beautiful dogs that are grey in color (that can run from silver to more taupe) and have amber colored eyes. The requestor was familiar with my recent work of integrating animals into the wood and gave me permission to do that. I knew I would need the perfect slab so it started consuming my thoughts. In fact, it was 4am and my husband woke up and caught me staring at pictures of wood. My obsession paid off!

Mock up of Weimaraner piece I found a walnut slab that had movement that looked like the muscled neck of a Weimaraner. I got sign off from the customer and started building the armature for the head. You know, now that I look at that picture again, this one looks really phallic too. Who knew felting would be so erotic? - hee hee The final two pictures show the armature and one of the ears that I wet felted. I was worried about how I was going to achieve both the color and sheen of the weimaraner. Hearthside fibers had peduncle silk top that was perfect. It felted nicely with some merino wool for the ears. I will likely just needle felt the silk fibers onto his head but I like having options. The grey stain of the wood also exactly matches the silk. This will make the integration of the head and neck look beautiful in the end. Can't wait for this one to complete. Technically, it has to be ready before Christmas but I am hoping to find time to complete it sooner.

It seems fitting that I finish the Snake, Owl and Maybe a Puma series with the owl, given that my original inspiration was from a photo of one that my daughter sent to me from this article. I intentionally saved this one for last. Owl's are my favorite bird and I've created a few before but never one integrated into the wood. Finding the right piece of wood was key.

Original Slab for Owl A nice piece of walnut. It had some soft spots at the bottom but I was ok with that. Once I cleared the soft wood out, I had plenty of space to inlay felt feathers. I tried to convince the man at the wood store that this was the perfect owl butt - he couldn't see it ;( Brought it home and sent my husband to work with his fancy workshop tools to route out the light wood in the center. This section will be for the owl head. Then it was wood finishing time so that I had the final colors for matching my fibers. I started first on the tail feathers. I made many needle felted feathers using several shades of brown merino, as well as some lovely black e. friesian wool and suri alpaca blends I received from my friends at Sanctuary Wool. When you look closely at the bark, you can see quite a bit of variation and movement. I wanted the felt feathers to blend in as seamlessly as possible = smooth finish. There are several techniques to get a smooth finish when needle felting. With something as thin as feathers, an electric fabric shaver works wonders. Here is a picture of half of the feathers shaved. You can really see the difference!

Owl tail feathers The completed tail feathers integrated beautifully with the wood. I am extremely happy with how they turned out. Now that the tail feathers were done, I set my sights on the owl head. Getting a tight stripe to mimic the rings of the wood was going to require wet felting.

Owl completed tail and head opening I layered brown and tan merino sheets of fibers and created pre-felts. It was important that the sheets were felted enough to be solid but not too felted for the colors to blend together. In this case, I was also not careful with keeping my rolling even. I wanted there to be width variance between colors and bends and curls where the wool shrunk inconsistently. The wool was felted into its final shape once it was placed into the wood.

Creating Stripes for Owl Body All that was left was to build out the owl face. This project was always taking liberties with any owl actually found in nature but the closest was the Barred Owl whose face I used for inspiration.

I had a lovely visit with the folks at MOWA over the weekend and somehow got on the subject of snakes. After I left the museum, I went to my favorite wood store and found a beautiful piece of spalted maple that I thought looked like a snake skin.

Spalted Maple Slab My normal process is to use the wood as a backdrop for my animal. Never tried making a snake before so achieving a snake skin texture to my liking was going to be tough. I started down a path of nuno felting with the hope that I would get some snake skin like texture - nope. Next I thought maybe a whole series of wool nepps felted together would give the texture that I was looking for - got distracted before I could try. Then my husband sent me this photo of an owl camouflaged in a tree and it got me thinking about using the wood in an entirely different way.

Owl hidden in tree I plan to use the snake skin texture of the wood as part of the snake itself and have the fiber come in and out of the wood. Here is a very rough sketch