Landscape Mood

June is for landscapes

I’ve been on a landscape kick for the last two months. This new-to-me obsession has recently appeared in my handmade jewelry and fiber art, and has gotten me interested in improving my painting skills as well. I can trace this inspiration back to 3 specific assignments I received during a month-long art challenge called #creativesprint. Here’s the blog post if you missed it.

Although the assignments were diverse, and I used different mediums as much as possible, these 3 challenges had a similar outcome. On April 9th, the assignment was to create something inspired by water - I painted 3 seascape pendants. On the 15th, the assignment was to work with your non-dominant hand - I awkwardly painted an abstract scene with my left hand. On the 17th, we were challenged to create something inspired by a poem - I chose Whitman’s “Pioneers! O  Pioneers!” and needle felted a landscape inside a small embroidery hoop.

Those pieces were just for fun, an excuse to give my creative mind a bit of a workout, but I’ve been in a landscape mood ever since. I recently launched this series of 7 pendants featuring bright blue skies and wide-open prairie, and just posted this #MakersEyeView video showing the process (time lapse) to my YouTube channel.

Watch how Sarah Mandell of Once Again Sam paints a landscape featuring cloudy skies and wide-open prairie, then turns them into 7 one-of-a-kind pendants. Wear an original painting everyday! Checkout Once Again Sam on Etsy: www.onceagainsam.com

This week, I’m excited to be launching this limited edition series of 5 needle felted landscapes. Each piece goes live at 8PM EST, one per day, starting Monday June 6th, through Friday June 10th. Pick out your favorite and follow me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter to see the introductions this week!

Learning Shibori Dying

Getting my hands dirty is something I look forward to. Dying my hands blue….well, that was new for me until recently. I took a Shibori dying class this weekend, and as always, learning something new and unrelated to anything else I’m involved with, tends to inspire me in unexpected ways. Not only did I learn about the historical significance of indigo, but also practical information about working with natural dyes. I can admit this now, after the fact, that I didn’t realize indigo was a plant. I guess I always assumed it was a mineral or chemical compound, but it’s actually a crop, one that’s making a major comeback on American farms. Who knew! Well, you might have known, but I certainly didn’t.

The class was organized by The Maker’s Collective, taught by Catherine Cross of the Summer Blues Indigo Dying Workshop, and hosted at Knack here in Greenville, SC. Our group spent the first hour watching demonstrations of different techniques, learning an overview of Shibori dying, followed by two hours of our own hands-on experiments. We used clothespins, rubber bands, clamped plywood, and lots of other random stuff to resist the dye in certain areas, creating all sorts of interesting and unpredictable patterns on test fabric, and eventually “real” stuff like clothing. I brought some white leather scraps from my studio, just to see if it would work, and was thrilled with the results. It was such a blast!

A few of my finished pieces

Some of my pieces turned out beautifully, but most did not. I couldn’t get the dye to do exactly what I wanted, but it’s nice to give up control sometimes. Here’s why my so called failures are actually good for the health of my creativity:

I need freedom to fail sometimes. I need freedom of process, to experiment with new mediums that may or may not complement the work I do for my handmade business Once Again Sam. My average day is filled with production, making finished items to fulfill orders, all of which have to look a certain way. My business is booming, which is exciting, but I don’t often have time to just dabble and screw around in the studio like I used to. I have to be diligent with my time and make make make, otherwise by business might fail.

The thing is, my business won’t fail just because I took a few hours one Saturday afternoon to go learn something cool like Shibori dying rather than working on orders. It’s healthy to get out once in awhile and try something new, just for fun, just to keep my creative juices flowing. Experimenting with different mediums is how my business started, and I have to step back and remember that, and choose to pursue more of it, because it will help me grow. Afterall, I’m a maker (who currently has blue hands), not a factory.

The Bunny Project

There’s something about bunnies. Sure, they’re utterly adorable and their skittishness is sweet, but they’re also quite clever, and perhaps a little bit spooky at times. Their secret lives make me awfully curious. Bunnies are my most beloved muse, and after months and months of holiday craft shows, holiday orders, and the holiday rush in general, I finally took a little time to make something just for fun. This collection was purely for my own enjoyment, but since several of my handmade pieces sold within hours of being posted, it would seem I’m not alone in my obsession with bunnies. Bunny lovers unite!

“The Bunny Project” had been stewing in my mind since early October, but during that time of year I simply don’t have the luxury of working on anything ol’ thing I feel like. I’m swamped keeping up with orders and preparing for craft shows, and getting ahead or developing new product ideas is just not possible in those busy months. As a reward for getting through a record breaking fall season, I treated myself to some time off after Christmas and finally made the bunnies I’d been imagining for so long. Some of them, at least. I have a list of about 30 cotton-tailed characters and was only able to produce 9 of them so far.

Will there be more bunnies in the future? YES!!! I don’t know when exactly, but I promise to add to #thebunnyproject as soon as I can. After all, bunnies are my favorite thing in the world to create.

So how are these creatures made anyway? Each bunny is needle felted with dyed wool fiber - no glue, no sewing, no hot water is involved. Just a bundle of roving (sheep’s wool that’s been cleaned and carded), a barbed felting needle, and lots of patience. These pieces took anywhere from 2 to 7 hours to make by hand. It’s a very time consuming craft, but I enjoy it!

Here’s a peek at what goes into making a small bunny. This time lapse video documents the 2 ½ hours it took me to needle felt a fairly simple rabbit, so you can see how it all comes together from start to finish.

Click Below to watch me make, or CLICK HERE to watch on my YouTube channel:

My material list is short:

-Polyfill wrapped in yarn (to create the form for the body & head)

-Pipe cleaners (to give the legs and arms rigidity)

-About 3-4 oz. of roving

-Flat sheet of felt (which I cut then covered in wool to make the ears)

-A set of plastic eyeballs

Collaboration is Key

When it comes to my writing, design, and generally most things in life, I tend to work alone. But my desire for independence can sometimes leave me in a rut, which is the worst possible thing for anyone trying to use their creativity. Thankfully, I've found a few key people I work well with, and those people both inspire me and challenge me to try new things.

One of the people I love to collaborate with is Teresa Roche, an artist and gallery owner in Greenville, SC. A few years ago, she started carrying some of my fiber art pieces and handmade jewelry in her gallery, Art & Light. It was a good partnership from the start, but things really started to go places when we began collaborating. If two heads are better than one, two artists working together are unstoppable! 

Teresa had the idea to incorporate some of my needle felted animal heads and birds into her assemblage pieces, and I was so pleased with how our combined efforts turned out. My fiber art had always been a stand-a-lone type of thing, but it really shined when paired with Teresa's eye for texture, form, and balance.

I felted the bunny head, Teresa did the rest!

This video explains a bit more about our process, and how our different backgrounds mesh well together. 

Recently, we started collaborating on something completely different. I had been wanting to add some painted pendants to my Curious Cameo line for awhile, and had done some trial pieces that just weren't looking very good (but I kept trying, and was good and stuck in that rut for a few weeks). I'm not a painter. I've never been a painter. So why did I think I'd be able to paint these glorious pendants I was envisioning? It dawned on me Teresa Roche would be the perfect person to collaborate with - she's an amazing painter, her color sense and brushwork is so unique - and by incorporating her original work into this new jewelry line, it became something truly special that showcases her art in a way anyone can enjoy, even if they don't have much wall space or the budget for a larger original painting. Each pendant is one-of-a-kind, capturing a tiny work of art in a 1"x1" or 2"x1" frame. The pendants in the image below are the latest edition to this blossoming collection, (my favorite ones yet, I might add!). They're available exclusively at Art & Light Gallery in Greenville, and are launching this weekend in conjunction with Open Studios. 

Hands off! I already claimed the one on the far left ;-)

Alpaca Dreams

One day, maybe five years from now, or perhaps twenty five years, I would love to live on a small farm and raise alpacas. They are by far the sweetest animal I've ever encountered. They're fairly small, the tallest ones are about eye level with me, they hum, have long long eyelashes for flirting, and they each have their own unique hairstyle, it seems. But, the real reason I want alpacas in my life is because they are the source of one of the many materials I use in my fiber art. I spend a few hundred hours each year needle felting, and truly enjoy this tedious but highly rewarding form of fiber sculpture. It would be a joy to raise the creature that provides what I need to make more "felted curiosities", so I hope one day my alpaca farm dreams really do come true.

Sweet alpaca face

For now, I live in the burbs and sadly cannot keep an alpaca in the garage, so I get to visit the animals and buy their fiber from local farms at events like the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fair in Asheville, NC. I've attended the festival for the last four years, and always come home with a couple of pounds of raw material, felting tools, and sometimes other things too. This year was no different! I scooped up several ounces of my favorite wool: corriedale, finn, and romney. I also got some alpaca fiber, which is a lot softer than sheep's wool, but is wonderful for felting and spinning. My big investment was a 24 needle holder, which looks dangerous (and it is, if you're not paying attention when felting!), a single needle holder, and a few fun things like a handmade ceramic alpaca magnet, alpaca socks, and a sweet ram sculpture made by an artist local to Asheville. It was a pretty good loot, a fun way to spend a Saturday morning, and I got to indulge my dreams of one day having a farm of my own, sourcing the fiber I need from my own backyard. 

Click through the gallery below to see photos from SAFF, my loot, and some more alpaca pics (okay, there's quite a few llamas in there too!)