bust a wolf!

before the always busy buzzing of christmas i was part of a pretty fun show at Hashtag Gallery in toronto. every piece of the show had to be no larger than 4x4 inches and can be in any medium you wanted. i've always been a fan of small pieces, the viewer has to step right up to the piece for a more intimate viewing.

 i wanted to do something dimensional and decided to make little portraits of my forever loved wolves.  i got to meet some of the true hearts that bought these wolves right off the wall and it made me feel so great knowing how excited they were to take one home. 

my favorite part of making wolves is adding the little noses and eyes bringing so much life to each one, but i never knew how much more life they could take on with a monocle or cutie peter pan collar. putting them into little frames makes them more about the little personalities the accessories gives them like a quirky or interesting family member and (hopefully for the veiwer) not like hunting trophies. ready your true hearts 'cause they are a lot of adorable!

these were more fun to make than the standing wolves, making me of course wanting to make more of this new kind of wolf pack (talk about craftlife troubles) and so, i did just that.
with certain things involving a certain imaginary boy who lives on the moon planned for the spring, i wanted to knock out a good little pack of these before this production laps over with the one.

with this new pack of wolf portraits i wanted to play and experiment a little with larger patterned fabrics then i came across a classy black velvet in my fabric stash that maybe made me gasp. 

yups, velvet. how could i pass up making a top shelf class act wolf? i see another monocled one in my craftlife future and i'm perfectly ok with that.

stuffing the 'experimental' ones gave me a little surprise of how good they looked, they tend to look quite different without stuffing...or ears. 

my other handmade wolves have always been in the gray-black-white colors like the gray wolf but along with the patterned fabric i've decided on some beige and brown wolf bust portraits. the subspecies of the gray wolf, the timber wolf, usually has more brown and beige with a touch of black in their coat colors so i wanted to play with that this time.

unlike the first little pack i made, these wolves will be in decorative vintage thrifted frames so they'll be ready to hang. 

my instagram is on the fritz again but at least i'm able to upload photos at least to share the progress with this pack so peek on there or my twitter feed. 

i'll post again when these pups are good and fully dressed for your true hearts!

internally yours,

sister valentine