Here There be Dragons

I've been making very small needle-felted and beaded dragons for a while now and have sold several on my Etsy shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/sarangus?ref=pr_shop_more). I always seem to make a bunch at a time when the mood strikes me, and the last week and a half the dragon mood struck again!
Here are the three that I finished recently:

The first one is called Ivy, it's one of the smallest I've made; but it has a very long tail, the end of which is in the shape of an English ivy leaf.
The second is named Lavender. This one is bigger overall and has larger wings.
The third is a sea dragon. It has a really cute face- a lot like a seahorse, if a seahorse had little ears.


Here are some that I made a while ago but are still available for sale:

 The one above is named Ember. As you can see it's a wee dragon that could easily fit into a pocket!

 This one is called Rain. I don't think that the pictures I took do if justice, so I'll be taking new ones soon.

And this one is Sky. It's made with roving that has swirls of lilac-purple wool mixed in with the light blue- I LOVE this roving!



And here are some that I've sold. Of course, I could make similar ones if anyone is interested (actually I can make a dragon in almost any color or combination of colors if anyone wanted...).

 This is Leaf. The first dragon that I ever made.

 This one is called sand. It's made with local, undyed alpaca wool so it's very soft.

 Snow was made from a mixture of rabbit angora and baby alpaca- oh so soft!

 

Stone was a special order for the same person who bought Snow. It has real (very small) quarts crystal fingers on its forehead and at the wing joints.                                                                                 

The rest of the Christmas Gifts

 One of my nephews is extremely hard to buy or make gifts for- he doesn't have a lot of wants and those things he does want he buys himself. Luckily he grew up a Harry Potter fan, and has a soft spot for owls. While shopping the after Halloween sales I came upon a little statue of an owl on an orb. It was painted black and covered with purple glitter, but the proportions were pretty good and I saw potential in it. Because it was an "eared" owl I decided to paint it as a Great Horned Owl.

I had considered painting the base to look like a globe, but instead I opted for faux bois; I achieved this look using layers of acrylic paint.

My niece, like many teenagers, is never without her cell phone, so I made a cross-stitch cell phone cover for her. I used a simplified portrait of Ted (the family dog) for the subject. I trimmed it in mini-ball fringe and used stretch velvet for the back, so if she switched to a slightly larger phone the cover will still fit.

One of my brothers is just as hard to buy for as my nephew. However, I remembered that he really liked a painting I had made last year. At first I was going to make a copy of the painting for him on a canvas, but there was the challenge of mailing it to him without it getting damaged (and without paying a mint in shipping costs). I thought about painting it onto an unstretched canvas, but then he'd have to find a frame for it and/or stretch it himself. Luckily I was struck by inspiration; I had a nice wooden cigar box laying around waiting to be painted and my brother appreciates a good cigar now and then, so I decided to copy the painting onto the outside of the cigar box. I used acrylic paints and gold leaf:

Of course it's a little more impressive in person, it's hard to see the crow because of the light reflecting off the poly, but you can get the general idea.