First Raffle prize winner was Maxieverse (@ bsky)! They wanted Hanzo Urushihara from The Devil is a Part-Timer. (If you haven’t seen it, you definitely should! It’s a fun show.) How fitting this felt for a 666 Raffle to start with.
I had a lot of time in between getting to this piece. Dealing with depression is no joke, but I’m incredibly thankful for the patience for me to get to this at my own pace.
I mentioned before that I’ve never done a huge piece like this. I did a Kirby felt piece as a gift for a friend many moons ago, I like the medium, but I don’t really have an excuse to use it. I also don’t have the room to store art attempts for fun, so I thought a raffle would be a great way to practice and make my oomfies guinea pigs while also being able to give back and say thanks for the support! (2-birds-1-stone)
Initial Sketches
I had a couple ideas for this one. I had planned on making it more magic focused if portraited. I did have trouble choosing between the two, so I just sent it to Maxie to pick between!
With how much work this was and how unconfident I felt doing portrait, I’m super glad Maxie chose the landscape one! lol
The Process
Even though this was meant as practice, I did stress a lot. I struggle with perfectionism to a pretty nasty degree. So, I had to talk myself down from perfectionism and lots of fears if this came out to be a crappy gift. I have never embroidered EVER, but I had noticed from my previous felt piece that normal thread wasn’t going to show up and create designs where I wanted it to be seen. So, that was an experience…! I struggled with just threading the embroidery and figuring out how much to even add.
DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN JUST UNTWIRL THE EMBROIDERY FLOSS AND USE AS MUCH OR AS LITTLE AS YOU WANT?! I had no idea, but that helped A LOT!
The face didn’t feel right from my first attempt (on the right). This is when I was struggling with using embroidery floss for the first time and I decided it was time to read up on it. I spent a few days reading and watching other people on youtube use it. It’s a little funny to admit that I had to do so much research, but again I’m a perfectionist! I kept preparing way past what I needed to know.
The wings were complicated, but I used Tracing paper & Tissue paper to cut out the wings & embroider a pattern. I left a bit behind with the tissue paper when embroidering, that I realised it wasn’t strong enough. I should have used tracing paper, but I learned! (Lint Rollers are your best friends when working with felt, too!)
Sewing it to the base was a bit sticky. I sewed it to the back of white felt with sticky residue on the back to fuse it to either the frame base or cardstock. I also considered another felt, I’m not really the best at sewing, so I wanted to be able to hide my mistakes. *Embarrassed* My sewing needle was VERY sticky by the end though. Haha!
This bad boy was so thick, I had to end up popping the glass out of the frame. I was considering whether to send it with the glass or without, but the piece wouldnt fit with the thick glass, so it kind of made my choice for me.
It maybe didn’t come out as magically perfect as it was in my head, but I had a lot of fun (+ heartache) working on this piece~! I’m really happy that Maxie was excited for it when they saw it and that’s all that really matters to me in the end. Thank you <3