Interview with a star - Irina (Chopard)

Please, welcome our team member Irina who runs Chopard shop on Etsy with great felted items.


Please tell us a little bit about yourself?
Hello, My name is Irina and I live in a beautiful place near Baltic sea, in Riga, Latvia, with my daughter and my husband. I am an economist and I work as an accountant in many companies. But I am lucky, since I work part-time, so I can work from home and have time for my hobby.


How long have you been creating? How did your journey in art and creativity begin?
I have started when I was 7 years old. I knitted my first dress then and my grandma embroidered it. I have been knitting for a long time, and there are knit dresses, hats, sweaters and other items in my collection. But 2 years ago I started looking for something new to do and found some information about felting. It sounded very interesting and I decided to try. My relatives told me that I was crazy.

My felting collection started with a scarf. It looked like a thick carpet on my neck :) But now I am much more skillful and in my shop you can find scarves made in the cobweb technique. Cobweb felt is deliciously fine and airy and has a beautiful glossy appearance when made with silk fibers.



What items do you carry in your shop?
In my shop you can find a lot of different items. There are dresses in nuno-felting technique. This dress collection took part in 3 fashion shows – the first one was in Lithuania, and the other two in Latvia. You can find different ladies hats, bags, scarves and wraps, even slippers. By the way, the thickness and strength of the wool being felted keeps your feet cozy and warm during the cold season. The natural fiber will also wick moisture away keeping your feet cool and dry in warmer weather. These slippers are perfect all year round.



What inspires you?
Nature, everyday life and happy clients inspire me to create new exclusive works.


Do you take custom orders?
Yes, I think it is the best reason to make something interesting and original. You can be sure that your item will be one of a kind, and that you won’t ever see another one just like that! But until now I had only one serious custom order – it was an evening dress. I made it in Riga, but my customer was from Moscow and we contacted each other only by e-mail. My client wanted an exclusive dress for a wedding of her best friend. She was very happy when she received the dress!!!


What items in your shop do you most enjoy making and why?
Most of all I like to make hats




A stylish hat plays just as an important of a role in woman's wardrobe as do clothes and shoes. For centuries a pretty hat was a requirement for fashionistas all over the world. A great hat will certainly make your look unique and unforgettable.

What would you say makes your shop unique?
Most of items you can find in my shop are one-of-a-kind. I could not copy them even if I wanted to. Every item is unique starting with its statement, the story it tells and the mood it conveys.


Any sales or promotions?
Currently I am running a sale on this interesting blue bag


Name 3 things you can’t live without?
Family, coffee and felt!!!

What would you say to your clients?
Dear ladies, don't be afraid to look original, different and exclusive!

Story by Irina Chopard and Alla FleetingStillness

Tutorial How to make a felted flower brooch

Galafilc creates amazing and unique hand felted items. Today she will share her know-how on how to create a felted flower brooch.

To create a flower we will need about 20 gr. of white felting wool, plastic bubble wrap, soap, water, dye for coloring and a wooden roller.

The first step is to lay out pieces of wool on a bubble wrap. We will make six circles slightly different in size.

The second step is to wet our wool with soapy water. We spray the water evenly all over the wool and cover it with another piece of bubble wrap. Our wool is now ready for felting. At the very beginning we roll our wooden stick over the wrap once to squeeze extra water out of our wet wool. After that we roll our wrap around the wooden stick and start actually rolling it on a flat surface. I usually roll it about 100 times in one direction and 100 times in another direction.


Our wool is semi-felted now. We take it out of the wrap and gently squeeze and rub it in our hands until it is ready. Our pieces of wool should be pretty homogeneous with fiber intact and not separating. If the wool has felted well the original size of the piece changes. Our wool circles should be much smaller in size than the original ones.

Now we are ready to start creating an actual flower. We cut out a flower from each of the circles and felt the flowers a little bit for the edges to felt and become even. We rinse our flowers well and flatten them. It's time to form a flower now. We put the biggest flower at the bottom and the rest five flowers on top of it.

To dye our flower we will need to soak it in a vinegar first. For the final color not to be super bright I usually add a few drops of black dye to my dye mix. To prepare my dye mix I just mix dye with water. I soak my felted pieces into the dye mix and warm in up either in a micorwave or on a stove. I usually let my felt stay in the dye mix for about an hour. Finally I put my felted pieces into a vinegar once more to fix the color and let them dry afterward.

My brooch flower is almost ready. I assemble all the pieces into a flower brooch and attach a pin at its back. Our beautiful and unique hand felted flower brooch is ready!


translated by TonyaUtkina

Tutorial how to color dye felting wool with KoolAid

A great way to color or dye felting wool is with KoolAid. It comes in a wide variety of colors that could be mixed up to create even more colors. It doesn’t wash away and is as natural as a food coloring could be. Another great thing about KoolAid is that it can be found in any grocery store in US.

I suggest we start with a few bright colors like red for cherry flavored KoolAid, yellow for Lemon and orange for Orange and a few felted beads of medium size. To read more about the process of creating felted wool acorns please refer to my post on How to make felted wool acorns.

I first made colored water. To make it I added powder from KoolAid packs to the water in a few small plastic containers. As a result I’ve got five containers with brightly colored water. I added approximately a tea spoon of powder to each of the containers. Then I put each of my five beads into a separate container and let the beads suck in the colored water.

One can vary the quantity of powder dispensed in the water to make the solution more or less saturated. As a result beads can turn out of either pale and pastel hues or bright and vivid colors. It makes sense to heat containers with solution and beads in a microwave up to the boiling point for color to fully penetrate the beads. However be careful as beads will be super hot! I usually cool them off in cold water afterwards.

The result is pretty impressive. All of my five beads turned out to be colored differently. The most intensive, bright and beautiful color turned out to be orange. Yellow bead was not that intensely colored but I really like the light lemon color of the bead. They smell of oranges, lemons and cherries! Yummy!

All those brightly colored beads could be turned into acorns or into an acorn wind chime.

This post describes my personal experience with a particular product.
Please be careful trying to replicate the experiment!!!

Tutorial by TonyaUtkina

Easter felted egg cozies by YanArt

Get into an Easter spirit while making these colorful felted Eggs cozies! This tutorial is kindly offered to our readers by Yana (YanArt)

For this tutorial it is preferable you had some basic felting skills.

You will need a ruler, scissors, a marker, and a piece of PV film. For example you can use an old package. You will also need wool, water, soap and an egg.

Measure your egg's «waist» and add to the size 30% more (for example 14 cm + 30% = 18.2 cm). In the process of felting wool tends to shrink which is why you should add some size.

Divide this size in 2 (18.2/2 = 9.1cm) – this will be the size of the bottom of the triangular pattern for your hat.

You can choose the size of the top up to your liking but not less than the half of the egg's height. It can be a very tall or smaller hat, it's up to you (remember that wool shrinks).

1. Put the PV film triangular pattern on the bubble-wrap and spread several layers of wool (horizontally and vertically). Put a bit more on the edges – you will turn them over later.

2. Moist the wool with a light soap solution, cover with bubble-wrap and rub a little. Turn everything upside down. Remove the bubble-wrap and thoroughly turn the edges of the wool over the sides of the triangle.

3. Spread the wool on another side of the hat.

4. Repeat step 2. Turn the edges of the wool over the sides again horizontally. Lift and turn the wool at the bottom.

Do it in the upper direction (vertically) to make the bottom of the hat even.

5. Cover with a bubble-wrap and rub gently in circular movements.

6. Wrap everything up in a roll and roll it 50-80...100 times. Unwrap, shift a little the triangular pattern to avoid clotting and wrinkling.

7. Wrap up in a roll. Repeat step 6 several times.

8. Unwrap the roll. Remove the PV film pattern and felt with your hands.

Rub to achieve the shape of a pointy hat and to even the bottom of the hat.

9. Rinse the hat in warm water. Shape it up let it dry.

10. If needed you can use special needles for dry felting to make the bottom of the hat even.

Have fun felting and happy Easter!

The rusteam is on the front page of Etsy again!

Other great news  - again the rusteam was on Etsy front page!
It was at 1:00 EST when treasury collection "Thursday finds" was featured on the front page of Etsy. This beautiful collection was made by our teammate Ira (TomBjornDesigns). She wrote that she love each and every of those items.

Congrats Ira and all featured artists!

Tutorial Felted Poppy Flower

Today, Yana (YanArt) is sharing a tutorial how to make this great felted poppy flower.

To make a poppy brooch you will need:

- metal fastener
- black thread
- semolina
- acrylic paint (black/gray)
- PVA glue (polyvinyl acetate glue)
- bubble wrap
- wooden roller
- wool for felting (red, black, gray and green)

1. Spread out thin strands of wool on the piece of film in the shape of the circle. Begin from the center and move to the edge – do not do it in a different order! Make sure there are no spaces between the strands, otherwise there will be holes. Put the green wool in the middle but use a little less as you will add some black and some gray wool there as well.

2. Now you have to soak the wool in soap solution – just to make it damp. If you use too much solution the wool may shift! Cover the wool with another piece of film and with gentle pushes of your palm evenly soak the wool and foam up the solution.

3. Slightly press the film with your hands in circular moves. Turn the film upside down and remove the upper layer of the film. Be careful not to pull out the strands – they are not felted yet! What you see in front of you is the inside. Bend the edges of the circle (0.5 – 1cm) to make sure the petals of your poppy are neat.

4. Wrap the film with the wool around the roller and roll. Reel it out, spread out if needed, wrap around the roller from the other side and roll again. Reel out and make the incisions of the petals: cut the circle in 4 places and make the edges of the petals round. Roll again. After that use your fingers to rub the petals to give them the round.

Rinse and put the flower into the drying cup for several hours (over night).

5. Using the red wool and the same method make the second circle – this will be the upside (lower) layer of the poppy petals.

6. Now it’s time for the middle of the poppy. Use the green wool to arrange an oval bead (according to the size of the petals): dip the lump of green wool into soap solution and roll it between your palms. Rinse under the running water.

Form another round bead and squeeze it between the palms to make it flat. Leave them to dry.

7. Let’s make the filaments. Wrap the black thread around your fingers and cut it from the one side.
Cover the thread with glue (to give it firmness), then dip the tips into the
semolina. Hang out to dry. After drying tint them a little with black or gray paint.

8. After everything is dry, sew the flat green bead through with the black thread to make
your flower look like a real poppy. Sew it to the oval bead.

9. Assemble the threads-filaments into several beams and sew them to the first layer of the petals.
Place and sew the green middle.

10. Put the second layer of petals underneath and sew everything together – all the layers and the metal fastener.

Our poppy brooch is ready!

How to make a felted wool flower brooch

It's a perfect time to create a felted wool flower brooch. It will be a great addition to any party dress or holiday outfit. A felted flower brooch is not hard to make and it can be created at home using just soap and water.

First of all we will need felting wool in different colors. It can be purchased at either Ben Franklin or on-line at AshlandBay.


For a flower brooch I normally create a few layers of felt to make the brooch soft and fluffy. To create a layer we will need to lay wool flat on a plastic surface and wet if with warm water and soap. It makes sense to mix different colors of wool to create interesting combinations of new colors. Hand felting is a little bit like painting. You mix colors and get something amazing at the end!

For the wool to felt we will need to press and stroke it gently with our palms adding water and soap if needed. It will take a good 15 minutes for each layer to felt. When we cannot separate wool fiber any more and our layer is more or less intact it’s time to stop. Our wool has felted.

Let's rinse our layers with water and squeeze them gently so that all the water gets out. Now it's time to take a break and let our layers dry. I normally leave my hand felted pieces overnight to dry well.

Once our layers of felt are dry and soft we can start creating an actual brooch. For our brooch to be beautiful and unique we can use beads, felted balls, buttons, wood pieces and pretty much anything we can find in our home. I personally like to attach big buttons in the middle of my brooches to make them look more like flowers. Don't forget to attach either a safe pin or a special brooch pin in the back of the brooch. They could be purchased at Ben Franklin as well.

Felted flower brooches are great accessories. They add style and color to any outfit. I promise people will turn their heads when you wear a hand made flower brooch. It's so great to know that this pretty and chic brooch was actually created with your own hands!

As a member of Russian Artists Team I'm proud to present my amazing fellow artisans who create wonderful wool felted items:
AleksandraRoo
allmadewithlove
Beautyland
CityCrochet
dalmmar
frenchfelt
FunEmbroidery
galafilc
JaneBoFelt
jezek
JuliaFelt
manonknits
SilkMagic
soroka
Svetusha
VitalTemptation
YanArt
woolsolution

This post was written by TonyaUtkina at CityCrochet. You can read more about felting on my blog.

Wonderful things Wednesday - Wonderful felt

Felt is a process of creating material from sheep wool and other animal fibers like camel, llama, alpaca, mohair, cashmere goat and e.t.c.

There are a lot of legends around felt on where it appeared first. It was practiced by many cultures around the world since the Iron Age. Some legends say that wool was packed once into sandals of Saint Christopher to prevent blisters and became firm under the pressure of the body weight and presence of moisture. Some old felt hats 3500 years old were found in Scandinavia. Some felted horse adornments dated back to the Bronze Age were found in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. Felted clothing was used by Asian and Mongolian warriors of Atilla the Hun and Genghis Khan. The clothing was light and comfortable, wind- and waterproof.

The most popular Russian historical felt products were Valenki. These are traditional felted boots which will keep your feet warm even at the coldest winter! They were used for centuries and long ago had served a single family for years being sometimes passed from generation to generation.

Today we have a wide variety of felt products. Some of these are scarves, slippers, purses and even jewelry and home decor items. These are getting more and more popular these days. The felt makers now can use their imaginations to make a variety of products. Sometimes the felt artist makes items that are both practical and a piece of art.

Here is our collection of wonderful felted item today - enjoy!


1. White poppy felt flower a brooch by Soroka
2. Felted Wool Baby Booties with Flower in Natural Gray Color for 6- 12 month by IraRott
3. Hand felted grey necklace city style by TonyaUtkina
4. Nuno Felted silk and wool scarf Ashes of Roses OOAK by JaneBoFelt



1. Nuno Felted Bracelet with Jasper by Jezek
2. Nuno Felted scarf wrap Rowanberry OOAK by Galafilc
3. Felted brooch red heart by SweetNumber
4. Oriental tales ... Felted slippers by Svetusha



1. Blackberry hand felting scarf by Beautyland
2. Felted Ring in lavender by Daimblond
3. Nuno Felted Scarf/neckwarmer with Brooch by SilkMagic
4. Felted floral Art scarf / necklace by VitalTemptation

Wonderful things Wednesday - Expensive things we want

We all are making our wish list with the holidays rapidly approaching. What’s in there? What are you going to get for yourselves? for others?

While doing that, didn’t you ask yourself why people buy an expensive item over an inexpensive one?

Everyone has their own reasons. We are going to name just some of them:

1. The expensive item is probably excellent quality and that’s why it will last longer than a cheaper product.

2. It might be a one of a kind item. You will never see someone else at the party wearing that lovely little black dress, just like yours. Guaranteed.

3. The item might be a hand made that required a lot of work thus making it expensive.

4. Sometimes the materials are rare or expensive, which makes the item expensive.

5. Many times it may be an impulse buy because of love at first sight. Sometimes you can just glance at item and you know you just have to get this one! In the moments like these we hope the money is not a factor for you!

Here is our collection of expensive items – enjoy!

1. Citrine Garnet Ruby artisan pin-up coiled necklace in 14K gold filled - Darlene by Arctida
2. Art of Embroidery GOLDEN VENICE by FineEmbroidery
3. A Wave and a Goldfish Stained Glass Panel by FleetingStillness
4. Wedding Dress Medieval Style by Katrinshine


1. Jacket felted Ochre by JuliaFelt
2. Blue topaz diamond 14K gold pendant by MyWayToSay
3. Nuno felted dress tunic wool silk seamless OOAK Country by Galafilc
4. Felted set - bag and scarf Snowy Winter by Rudman




1. Teddy Bear OOAK 9inch by Oksa
2. Orange Chocolate Lace Crochet Dress, Beret, Booties Set for 3-9 month by IraRott
3. Brand New Luxury Baby Natural Bedding - Blanket/Comforter/Quilt Transformer for Boy by Woolsolution
4. Back-lit wall sculpture - Vertigo by CCYDstudio

Subtlety on the Etsy Front Page!

Our team's azure treasury Subtlety created by our teammate BlueberryCream was featured on the Etsy Front Page! Misty morning colors and amazingly beautiful items hand crafted by our talented teammates made a great Etsy Front Page! Congrats Nastya from BlueberryCream and the featured!

The following unique and beautiful Etsy artists were featured in this treasury:
Yevgenia, LAccentNou, Jezek, HappyfrogfromAlaska, Beautyspot, Lightkeeping, Galafilc, Herbolution, Cushyadornments, Kpersonboutique, Justlena, KarisaGraphic

Your summer essentials for less!

Summer is here and we have a lot of sales going on right now at the Russian Etsy Team stores. Take a look and have fun shopping!

Cozy hand knit socks, gloves and market totes at socksandmittens!

Cute jewelery and felted accessories at daimblond shop!

10% off on lovely jewelery at beautyspot - conditions apply to get a
discount - see store for details!

20% off on everything in a store at katrinshine shop - conditions
apply to get a discount, see store for details - gorgeous dresses,
corsets and quilted bags!

Jewelry for any occasion at Mywaytosay - free shipping on every purchase!

Colorful summer jewelry at Beautyland - free shipping on every purchase for USA customers until August 31, 2010!

Clearance sale on selected pieces at Arctida's store - fabulous jewelry!