Meet Etsy Felter & Artist: AmeliaMakesArt

There is so much talent and creativity on Etsy that you can't help but stumble around the site and find something truly amazing and unique. That's how I ran across AmeliaMakesArt. I was searching for custom portraits to see if I could make a go of it myself and saw her listings for felted likenesses of pets. I have to admit that when I saw the pictures I thought they were real dog sand clicked on the link wanting to see what the felted version would look like. I searched her shop high and low for about fifteen minutes, disappointed that she didn't have any pictures of her work. And then it hit me - what I was looking at WERE the pictures. The dogs I saw weren't the real models, but her expertly crafted likenesses. WOW! I was truly blown away.

Amelia lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband, who is also an artist, and their dogs Hazel and Oscar. Believe it or not she has only been felting animals for a year. She learned her craft from her best friend in college, who spent time in Iceland after they graduated and learned felting from his roommate. "I visited him in Iceland where the wool is abundant and the felt work is not only everywhere, but incredibly modern and progressive...I consider what I do now a combination of my deep love for dogs and my drive for making things. I am so fulfilled when I bring joy to someone with my likeness of heir dog or cat. I have quite a collection of photos of animals with their likenesses that people send to me. It is a fovorite aspect of my job and I post them on my blog (http://www.ameliamakesart.typepad.com/). About 30% of my work is memorial pieces of people's pets who have passed on and it brings so much joy to give them a physical memory to have and hold." She finds needle felting similar to sculpting. "The form is built with wool fiber piece by piece, using a special barbed needle to mold the fibers together," she explains. "It is a tedious process but the results are well worth it." Aside from her astoundingly lifelike recreations of dogs and cats Amelia is also a talented painter. Please check out her shop: http://ameliamakesart.etsy.com/

-Wendy Baylis

Dharma Designs

http://dharmadesigns.etsy.com/