If you love animals and their young ones, you’d surely love the felted creations of Tatiana Barakova. She’s a master at making tiny animal baby toys and her needle felting portraits are among the cutest creations that you can lay your eyes on.
This needle felting artist from Moscow, Russia, uses soft wool of realistic colors for needle felting to create pups, kittens, hedgehogs, and other adorable animals. Her felted pet portraits, more specifically her felted cat portraits, are a rage on the internet. Little wonder her Instagram page in Russian has garnered over 87,000 views and counting. “I am engaged in this work for 3 years. This is a very fascinating work, incredible sensations from drawing with soft multi-colored wool.” Tatiana told AwesomeByte.
Barakova’s love for animals and passion for painting, since her younger days, got her started on wool felt art. Previously, she used to make cloth dolls, later turned to polymer clay, but she then took a fancy for teddy bears. It was by sheer chance that she came across a book on dry felting in 2006 that interested her immensely. She decided this was the material she wanted to work with.
The same year Barakova took up needle felting and has been at it for some years now. She uses 100 percent of sheep wool for her creations and glass eyes to give them a realistic touch. For her, wool is an ideal material for handcrafting her fluffy animals, since it is soft and warm, and pretty to look at. Felting is certainly not easy. It takes her around two weeks to complete one felt animal.
Barakova’s creations are not only periodically exhibited in various exhibitions but have won awards too. In one of the exhibitions, titled TEDDYBÄR-TOTAL, held in Münster, Germany in 2014, her entry won the grand prize, the Golden George, in the ‘felting’ category. Her creations are on sale online. However, she doesn’t do toys on order but sells only her finished products.
Tatiana: Instagram
