New Etsy Shop!

As part of my ongoing attempts to refine the things I'm making and the way these curious creations are presented, I've decided to set up a new Etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/LostintheWoodDesigns . After a bit of reading about the differences between Etsy and Folksy, it's clear that Etsy has a lot more users (buyers & sellers) and I hope that may help me to get my products seen by the people they'd appeal to. While there's inevitably a lot more competition and items to wade through, I've discovered that the  things I want to focus on fit more naturally into the Etsy world than Folksy. Etsy not only has categories for crochet foods and animal heads (hurrah!), they also have lots of entries under these more niche categories. I was relieved that the process of setting up the shop was straightforwards and only subtly different from Folksy

Today I've added two new items, crochet rabbit heads. It would have been three but after writing up the listing, I found I just couldn't part with Rosey (right) who was the first bunny head I made & the one with the roundest, softest face. She'll now be given a more permanent home on one of my walls.

I'm also become fairly attached to Bettina (top pic) and Freddie (left) but worry that my house will become overrun with bunnies and so they're off to market.

I'll be making more of these very soon especially because of the cheery association of bunnies with Spring and Easter , hopefully others agree too! After considering the issue of mounting, I've decided to leave these unmounted as I think they give a more contemporary feel. They are designed as wall art with a nod to taxidermy but with a sweet, unthreatening twist.
Each head I make turns out differently due to variations in yarn, tension and the fabric used for the ears and button nose detail. Often I use little snippets of fabric found at scraps stores or given to me by nice relatives so mostly only enough for one bunny (which is one of the reasons Rosey has to stay, I can't recreate her exactly the same).

I've also started working on more intricate needle felted animal heads. I'm quite excited about using glass and acrylic eyes for the fox head I'm making, these should give the face a much more vivid look than the small black plastic eyes I've been using. Ms Fox here is destined to be mounted on a shield made of Welsh slate. More on that soon, here's a pic of her as a work in progress for now...