Masterful artist uses wool to create hyper-realistic animal figures
Back in 2016, Anna Yastrezhembovskaya, a Russian woman found interest in making medium-sized toys using wool as her main material.
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It all started when Yastrezhembovskaya, a mother of two, realized that her children’s toys were made of a certain material that she didn’t know. Because of her curiosity, she soon discovered that the toys were made of wool.
Her curiosity even pushed her to start making toys using the same material.
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“My first toy wasn’t nearly as pretty, it was rather funny, but I enjoyed the process so much that I kept trying,” Yastrezhembovskaya said. “I was felting during my free time, even at night, and I got better with each toy I made.”
She didn’t just simply try making toys, but also put hard work and maximum effort into doing it. Soon, Anna started to receive her first couple of commissions, and when she began flying off to different cities, that’s when her handcrafted toys became extremely popular.
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The Russian craftswoman was overwhelmed by the praises and support given to her by people, however, she didn’t let anything of that get into her head. She still wanted to be that normal mother who has a gift for creating such realistically looking animal toys.
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Her masterpiece was mainly focused on felted birds, but when her daughter, Masha, asked her to make a bat brooch – she made something that was quite too much for the size of a pin. That’s also the time when she found out herself that she could also make felted bats.
To make good use of the felted bat, her daughter decided to turn it into a toy. She even took a snap of it and posted it on her social media account with the caption, “Not for Sale!”
An unexpected outcome.
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Yastrezhembovskaya then continued with making felted birds and although she was kind of interested in making bat toys, she needed to set the idea aside for the time being. However, when she logged into her Instagram account after a busy week – something shocked her!
She received a bunch of messages from customers who bought her toy bat from different online shopping sites.
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“I have to admit that I didn’t expect such a huge interest in my little bat. Moreover, I didn’t expect it to be ‘sold’ in significant quantities for a ridiculous price of just $19.99. As a result, hundreds of people wrote to me in hope of receiving their bats,” Yastrezhembovskaya said.
The poor craftswoman didn’t know how to handle such a situation and what’s even worse about it was people started calling her a “Scammer.” Thankfully, her sister was there to her rescue and she helped her respond to customers by telling them nothing but the truth, that Anna didn’t know about the orders and some people just spammed her photo.
“I am flattered that my bats won the hearts of so many people, but the amount of orders I got was terrifying. It takes 10 days, working 12-14 hours a day, to make one bat-toy.”
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“Of course, I will keep felting as many bats as I can, but I want people to understand that these toys are fully handmade, so it’s a fairly lengthy process. Furthermore, there are so many interesting birds I would like to recreate in wool as well,” Anna explained.
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Despite the stressful experience brought by the toy bat, she still came to a realization that her hyper-realistic toys definitely made a lot of people happy. Because of that, Yastrezhembovskaya was fueled to do more animal toys such as hedgehog, eagle, otter, owl, squirrel, bunny, duckling, chick, and a whole bunch more.
To see more of her creations, make sure to take a stroll on Anna’s Instagram account.
Watch her gifted hands in action by watching the video below.
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Source: Positive Outlooks, Instagram – yast.anna