Welcome to Felter Skelter, your essential guide for needle felting inspiration and ideas!
Dani Ives of Be Good Natured creates beautiful wool paintings of plants and animals. She credits her background in biology/conservation for her chosen subject matter and it’s easy to see a real passion for nature behind her artwork.
I love watching her process on Instagram – her are some of my favourite photos! It’s interesting that, like many portrait artists, she starts with the eyes as they capture the soul of the subject. I guess in the case of dogs, the nose also captures quite a lot of character!
Dani isn’t just limited to animal portraiture, and can use her talents to capture all elements of nature. Thankfully her Instagram also features many close ups so you can truly appreciate her felt manipulation.
Her portraits are so striking that you can almost forget that they’re needle felted. The skill required to execute these images is remarkable, and it is great to see that Dani is now running a course on how to produce felt portraits.
You owe it to yourself to visit her site and follow her social media to see what she produces next. Here’s a selection of my personal recent favourites for you to enjoy.
When she does a human portrait, she chooses her subjects very wisely.
Just look at that detail – those eyes!
Oh, and she can do bubbles. In felt. Like it was the easiest thing! Truly awesome.
Visit Dani’s website, where you can sign up for her classes and also buy prints of her work. They’re irresistable!
Want some Needle Felting Inspiration?
What Technique Is This?
Needle Felting is the process of using a notched or “barbed” needle to compress layers of wool into denser felt that can be manipulated to create 3D sculptures. It is different to wet felting, which uses water to combine wool fibres, and these days there are a range of felting tools available that can enable you to make your own soft sculptures with ease!
