Lost In Translation

  Part of learning to felt is experimenting....and it always doesn't turn out like you had hoped.  Here is one example.  I started making felt stones early on, they look just like the one's we find at the beach (pictured below).  That was a good experiment, they turned out looking like the real thing after a couple of tries.  For awhile now I've had it in my head that it would look cool to make a vessel that looked like granite with the white veins running through it, similar to the rocks.  I thought since I've got the rocks down I should be able to translate that into a vessel.  Well, I wasn't able to pull it off this time.  It's the color of granite (the photo isn't so hot) and there are white veins but this doesn't resemble granite.  So now I have to evaluate why it didn't work and what can I do to make it look better next time.  A couple of things come to mind: the veins aren't very realistic-they're too linear and too chunky and to have thinner veins I'm going to have to reduce the size of the vessel so they don't get lost and maybe put some darker gray along one side of the vein to make it look inset.  I'll have to think about it for awhile to work out all the angles.  Back to the felting table.
 

  One bummer about working big and having it not turn out is not just the time spent but it gets expensive. It's all a learning experience though.  A friend said I'm being too hard on myself, it looks pretty good.  Well, I don't want pretty good, I want a more realistic piece that looks great!  I don't think any artist/crafts-person who is any good lets just average work go out there.  If I'm not hard on myself I'm not going to get to that level of talent to produce the type of work I'm striving for. 
  Which brings me back to the subject of the rocks, a fun little thing to make but hardly much effort to make.  Can you guess what my most popular selling item on my Etsy shop has been, yep, the rocks.  While I've sold a few scarves and other things I'm much more proud to say I've made, I keep struggling with the decision to keep selling the rocks or not.  Unfortunately, I have to think about business, it does bring people to my shop and so I have to hope they'll see the other things and maybe buy something else.  And they are fun, I do have to say, they look cool all gathered together.  I love seeing peoples reactions when they pick them up and realize they aren't really a rock!