DIY: A Needle Felted Camo Jacket for the Artist

Power to the Art Teacher!

OR in the case of this week of craziness, Power to the Cranky, Tired, Gray-Haired-Growin' Art Teacher...wait, scratch that once more. Forget Power. All this art teacherin' lady wants is grape flavored adult drink and chocolate. Copious amounts of chocolate. And no one will end up with a paint brush in their eye. 

So this lil jacket o' power has been in my sketchbook and on my mind for many moons, y'all. In fact, my end goal is to have the front of this jacket ablaze with art teacherin' badges like the Girl Scout badges I had on my sash as a kid. Like a "No One Gave Themselves a Haircut in Art" badge and an "I Didn't Huff the Sharpies After a Rough Day with Kindergarten...Today" badge. You know, the ushe. 

Y'all might remember from my last needle felted coat that I'm on a bit of a Mad Men bender. Well, I'm nearing the end of the show (noooooo!!) which means I'm in the midst of the late 60's/early 70's. I was fascinated with that era in high school and college, dressing full tilt hippie (with bell bottoms as big as my head, butterfly collared shirts and a sweet stacked sneaker). My fave jams were Sly and the Family Stone, Ohio Players, The Jackson 5 and the soundtrack from Shaft (yes, seriously. Just ask anyone who shared neighboring dorm room walls). I had that time very romanticized in my small little head. As an adult-sized human (with a tween-sized brain) I now realize that time in history was both a frightening and swiftly changing one: the shooting death of a president and his murderer; the shooting of Martin Luther King, Jr.; riots; protests; the Vietnam War; women's rights; racial tension and the list goes on. The Black Panthers were formed during this time and made famous the slogan "All Power to the People" to protest the rich, ruling (and white) class which they found oppressive. 

Soon that slogan came to represent all people who felt the injustice and inequality of the time. I find it is similar to how folks now view that ALL lives matter, not just some. I think that fighting for equality will last for many years to come. Thankfully, we live in a country where we are free to express our unhappiness (peacefully, of course) with our many gifts: song, acting and art. 

And so all that serious chatter to say, such was my inspo for this here needle felted number! Because I worked on this between Mad Men episodes and was much to lazy to hop up and get my camera, I don't have any process pics. My bad. But I figured y'all have seen enough of my needle felted stuff to get a pictures. If not, I've added a Big Fat Hairy List with Links at the bottom of this here blog post. 

In other news, I'm so excited to wear this to NAEA 2016 in just a coupla weeks! Who's going to Chicago for the art teacherin' convention? I do hope to see/meet/watch-netflix-and-chill (er, wait, no) with all my fave friends! 

Until next time, Power to the Art Teacherin' Types! 

And now, for that big list of all my needle felted pieces...

It all started with a hole-y sweater that I thought I'd experiment on...all these sweaters are thrift store finds that I embellished with needle felting. Many of these posts include step by step and video: bird sweater; crayola sweater; puppy sweater

 Portrait of Asha, my cat, sweater; my very first sweater and a lil Halloween jacket

Floral sweater a la Anthropologie; Applique'd needle felted sweater; Sunflowery sweater after van Gogh

 Faux fox sweater; pencil-tastic button down; owl sweater

 Then I moved on to dresses...the Starry Night dress; Kandinsky dress number one and number two.

 The Scream; Jim Dine's Heart and a lil tribute to Monet.

 Emoji dress; paint splatter coat and Mondrian coat!