Needle Felting

Materials:

Roving In Many Colors (fine twisted bundles of fiber)

Felting Needles, (36gauge, 38gauge, 40gauge, 42gauge)

Single Needle Holder

3 Needle Holder

Foam Pad

Super Sculpey Oven-bake Clay

Dotting Tool for Clay

Acrylic Paint

Paint Brushes

Optional:

Spray Paint (alternative: Posca or Tfive markers or me using spray paint for kids outside class)

Clear Nail Polish (alternative: acrylic gloss medium)

iPhone Polycam app

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/b83767_0e5e7419e68142f985cc3c554b87330c/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

The pink under the horns is meant to be gills incorporated into the horns as a protective feature. The ears are a similar shape to the horns to trick predators into thinking it has more horns than it does. In the wild the horns are sharp but mainly just for show. This creature's primary means of defense is using it's claws. It's usually seen digging around muddy banks for food. This individual is blind in his right eye and will croak happily if you feed him a cricket. This is a critically endangered species. Size is to scale

Goals:

• To experimented with mixing Sculpey clay and felt together for the first time

to make a creature

• To better understand the potential visual effects and texture this medium can create

• To experiment with mixing and blending colors with felt

• To understand the needle felting process better to better instruct students

In Progress Images:

1: Felt the core and wingspan to judge the size and begin sculpting

2: Finish sculpting and bake clay

3: Paint clay

4: Felt strips and run them through holes in clay to attach to felted body

5: Round out body and add details

Findings:

• I love how the feet turned out and I was going to make the felt solid green but I liked the marbling effect the felt can make and there's so many potential ways for that to be used

• I kept using too little wool for the wings and overstabbing the thin layers and the felt would break apart

• I kept using too little wool for details and would accidentally overstab those details until they would disappear into the main body

• I wish I had matched the spray paint to the wool better and spent more time making the upper legs larger and structured more realistically

• The felt needs to be densely compacted into strips to feed through slits in the clay to attach it securely. Trying to just poke the raw loose strands of felt through the loops of clay won't be strong enough to hold the clay to the felt body

I scanned the Sculpey clay parts in the Polycam app on my iPhone. I've found this scanning app works better for scanning my clay sculptures and is more intuitive than signing up for a time slot to use a library's Shining 3D EinScan Pro HD scanner. If those time slots are booked, those fancy scanners cost about $7,699 to own and the app can work just as well anyway (disclaimer: the app still costs money, the amount depends on your plan)

My hope is to use the scans to 3D print these new talons and creature head to create an army of needle felted creatures of all different colors. That way I could change the wing and body shapes when I needle felt while saving time sculpting. Usually I make whole sculptures so hopefully when I make more parts I can mix and match them and connect them with felt bodies

For 3D printing in the past I've used a printer my whole extended family pitched in on for my graduation present from undergrad at VCUarts. Before that I used the printers at the campus library. When I came to George Mason I was completely wowed by the maker space full of 3D printers (and more) at the Mason Innovation Exchange within The Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Impact. I'm hoping to patent one design patent and two utility patents through this office

My dream would be to pass these kinds of STEM skills off to kids so they could use those tools to make whatever kind of fun art projects they wish. I think for women representation to increase in both the arts and STEM it's important to let girls have the opportunity to tinker with technology as part of their creative process in early education

On my own time I would like to add clear-ish fabric to extend my creatures wings and create a tadpole like tail and extend the white felt in tendrils from the body into it to attach it. Ideally this would create a simplified texture similar to the helicopter leaves (in one the first images above)

Application In The Classroom:

• I would recommend combining clay and felt in this way only for advanced high school IB students applying to art programs

• After experimenting with creating this creature, for a wider range of grade levels I would split the different skills I practiced to make it into 3 different simple, completely separate and unrelated lesson plans

1: Felting

2: Clay and Sculpting

3: Scanning objects using Polycam and 3D filament printing (not resin 3D printing). A range of ages (late elementary and up) could scan found objects, simpler clay forms, or each other to print and paint. I would want to use recycled plastic bottles to create and source my own filament for the kids the way I've seen online

Inspiration:

Mastering this felt/clay combo for a portfolio is part of what got one of my roommates from undergrad also accepted into art school. With both of our love for sculpting creatures in different ways, we ended up with many creatures living in our apartment. I LOVED watching her creatures take shape. While I usually only sculpt clay and don't needle felt, she inspired me to try the combo in my own style when I had the opportunity to needle felt in this class

Part of my inspiration for my creature's design came from putting a strange twist on my pet from a daily journal and habit tracker phone app called Finch: Self-Care Pet

One of my friends became obsessed with it and asked me to join so we could go on shared quests to complete our goals together. Goals are self-set real-life tasks (like drinking water or completing homework) and checking off boxes allows you to move further through the apps storytelling. Immediately I became obsessed with it and roped yet another friend in

It's for ages 9+ and is really wholesome. I've been using it for 107 days straight and it's kid friendly. My pet's named Pebble and he has an even smaller pet (a cheshire cat that disappears to varying degrees sometimes) who I may also needle felt