Inspired by Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland

Spring reminds me of mushrooms and I wanted to do one. But then came the question as to what creature to put with it. I had already done a little mouse peaking out from under one last year. The next idea was the caterpillar in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" . I didn't want my caterpiller to be like the illustrations in the book  or like the ones from Tim Burton's movie. So I read the section where Alice first meets the caterpillar and made mine from that reading.   My little guy is 3 inches tall just as in the book. I took some liberty by puting a fez on him. It just seemed to go. His little hookah is made from a black stone chess piece and some very expensive beads. I went to the bead store to find the right ones and ended up only being satisfied with the sterling silver filled and gold plated ones. You would think that a caterpillar would be a fairly simple creature to create. But he was rather complex. He was hand dyed and shaded and his legs were seperately attached and his front legs were sculpted from Apoxie Sculpt. The worst part was sculpting his face. I wanted him to be insect like but have human charateristics. A realistic catterpillar would've been pretty creepy.  I used to think they were kind of cute as a kid and kept tomato caterpillars for pets. But I don't think the general public would think so. I hope you all like him ~Robin

P.S. His eBay auction starts this Tuesday at 6:45 pm PST with the usual reserve price of $135.00 and the Buy It Now of $224.00

My Dormouse and Fox

Well unfortunately or fortunately, depending how you look at it, Henry didn't sell. So back to Etsy he goes. I kind of like having him around. He makes me laugh. I think he didn't sell because he was maybe a bit too weird and out of the norm for my work. But I like him that way. Henry's the second only item that I've had on eBay that didn't sell. I've been very fortunate. The first unsold item was in April of 2008. It was a needle felted mouse that I used hematite beads for eyes. I think her eyes were a bit creepy. Plus she was a little too fuzzy. I made her when I first started needle felting and hadn't got the hang of working with llama wool. She ended up being adopted by a woman here in town.



I just listed two new works yesterday. One is Mr. Finnegan Foxworthy and the other is Dora, the sleepy little dormouse. I kind of jumped the gun and forgot to schedule Finnegan to go on at 6:45 PM PDT. So he's got an odd ending time at 3:13 PM PDT. But Dora ends at the regular time. Dora was a bit of work. Her teapot was completely needle felted and is hollow. I also needle felted two sugar cubes and made a tea bag filled with wool. The tag on the tea bag reads sleepy time tea bags, decaffeinated. Her reserve price is $145 while Finegan's is $95.

Please click here to bid or view their auctions.

Thanks so much for reading!