Porcupanda

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It’s another year where I take part in Gishwhes! And as always I have put my needle felting skills to the test to make this years wonderful new mascot the Porcupanda.

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Since the porcupine part was going to need time to dry I started with the quills. I used toothpicks which I stained with some of my husbands warhammer paints. I used black ink which is a watered down acrylic that absorbed into the wood keeping the texture rather than painting over the wood.

I started on the head using my normal technique of a pipecleaner frame and layers of raw wool to build up the head shape.

After it looking like a panda lollipop I used more pipe-cleaners on the body to give it legs. This just kept the body even and although the pipe-cleaners did not reach the bottom of the paws it at least gave a joint where the legs could be built on.

I decided to work my way down the body starting at the front legs building up layers of raw wool to create the legs chest and shoulders.

Next was creating the belly back legs and bottom. I left a little of the pipe-cleaner sticking up as I wanted to make a little panda tail but ended up cutting of off as it got in the way of the quills.

Now that I had the basic raw wool structure it was time to start adding the merino wool and eyes.

I decided to make the panda with an open mouth as from the images in the mascot scandal I liked the panda having an open mouth.

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Once the whole panda was coloured it was time to add the quills.

I was happy with how Porcupanda was coming along but felt there was not enough quills, more were stained and the Porcupanda was finished.

Porcupanda 2.0

I wasn’t happy with the way the quills looked and adding more just didn’t seems to fix the problem so I decided to look again at the porcupine part of the Porcupanda. I added blended white and black merino wool twisted into tips and purchased from Etsy some Quills from an amazing seller who harvests them from road kill.

The end result I am much happier with.

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