Exotic felted flowers by Roltinica

We all get inspired by beautiful flowers. In spring and summer with so many flowers in bloom we get positive energy just by stepping out into a garden or walking in a park. It’s somewhat harder to find flowers in winter though. I’ve recently came across an amazing artists Elena who makes exotic and beautiful felted flowers. She helps us stay surrounded by flowers during cold winter days.



Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
My name is Elena and I live in a beautiful city of Naberezhnye Chelny, Russia. I love flowers, nature and bright colors. Our nature is some what reserved and we don’t have exotic flowers and plants growing in our gardens and forests. Felting unique looking flowers is a way for me to compensate for the luck of nature diversity and complexity.



How did you start?
It all started with my daughter Tatiana once coming across a felted purse tutorial on the Internet. The idea of felting a purse was quite inspiring and we ended up making one. That’s how I started hand felting.

Russian traditions of felting date back centuries and these days there are a lot of books and tutorials on how to felt pretty much anything. After experimenting with making a purse and other items I tried to make a flower. The process absorbed me completely and I make mostly flowers ever since.

I felt pretty much every day and experiment with felting a lot. I’ve come up with my own technique of felting flowers so that fluffy wool turns into smooth and soft yet firm flower petals. I try to make my flowers look real and the only thing that makes them different is a lack a scent.



What inspires you?
My family supports and inspires me in everything and I’m very thankful for that. My mom is my most authoritative critic – if she does not like the flower, I will remake it.

Nature and flowers are great sources of inspiration for me. I experiment with felting a lot and new techniques and fibers offer new possibilities and let me create different and unique items. On top of wool silk is another fiber that is great for felting. Mixing wool and silk I make interesting textures that become exotic flowers.



What are your creative plans for the future?
I wish there were more that 24 hours in one day! I plan on writing a master class for flower felting. People are often curious to learn how I make my petals and stamens that look like real. I’ve been experimenting a lot with felting to get to the point where my felted flowers look fresh and live. I’ll be happy to share my knowledge with other felt loving artists.

Thank you, Elena

Blue and chocolate felted flower brooch

I continue experimenting with hand dyeing. It's such a fun process and I just love the colors that turn out at the end. To create my chocolate blue flower felted brooch I first hand felted flower petals in white and dark brown. I had all three types of wool available at home.

To add color to my brooch I hand dyed each felted petal with blue drink mix which contains food coloring. As the result my petals have spots of bright blue to contrast their dark brown color and they smell like raspberry. My pieces of hand felted wool look so different now. Bright blue color makes them vivid and summer-like.

After assembling all my hand dyed pieces into a flower and attaching petals to a hand crocheted jute base I've got an exotic flower brooch in blue, dark brown and white. It will go well with any neutral or white outfit and will add color to a business casual dress.

Clematis flowers in purple, tender pink and white

I love taking pictures of flowers. Most of the flowers are so exquisite, tender and glamorous! Even if they are not flowers still somehow radiate positive energy and happiness. Clematis with its wide range of purple, violet and pink hues definitely deserves to be noticed. A unique shape of the flower's petals and stamens makes it a great object for macro photography.

As a result I've got a number of abstract images of clematis colored mulberry, orchid, pale pink, purple and white. All the curves and twists add sophistication to the images.

The flowers could be a great inspiration for artists and craftsmen. Their tender color mixes and delicate lines could inspire jewelry makers, felting artists and many other wonderful members of hand making community to produce unique and stylishly colored pieces.

There are over 200 pieces of Clematis that comes in a wide variety of shapes and colors. The plant is relatively easy to grow. It doesn’t take too much space. Clematis is a climbing plant that could be grown into a beautiful fence in your yard.

Spring tulips

As daffodils tulips are a spring staple. We are used to yellow and bright red spots of color in city parks and our yards. But as I found out tulips come in a wide variety of colors and shapes.

If we look back at the history of Europe tulips played quite a dramatic role being at some point in the center of Dutch tulip obsession. Although originally cultivated in Ottoman Empire tulips gained extraordinary popularity in Europe with a number of tulip festivals being help in many countries including England and Netherlands.

Nowadays tulips successfully compete with other beautiful spring flowers for prime spots in our gardens.

Spring flowers in blue red and yellow

It's so beautiful outside with all the trees, bushes and early spring flowers like daffodils and tulips beginning to bloom. Since I now have a new macro it's the perfect time to try it out and preserve all that spring beauty. Inspired by a few amazing photographers on Etsy I went out for my hunt. Ideally I would love to take pictures of flowers in a wide palette of colors with all possible hues, shades and color combinations. I've started with blues, reds and yellows.

Here are beautiful pale blues with hints of yellow on a greenish background.

Bright reds of a Japanese maple look so fresh and juicy. The flowers are bitten by cold a bit but I'm sure they will survive! The shape of the flower head is very peculiar and unique.

Bright yellow of a daffodil caught my eye. The flower looks like a porcelain with its petals being so fragile and light.

Lotus Nelumbo Nucifera in Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

On my recent visit to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden I was absolutely stunned by these strikingly beautiful and exotic flowers! I had no idea they grow in Virginia. Nelumbo Nucifera commonly known as Lotus is a rather large plant with leaves sometimes measuring as much as 24 inch. in diameter.

Lotuses are apparently edible and very few people actually know about it. For centuries natives of Australia, Japan, and southeast Asia have been using different parts of this plant in their cuisines. According to the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden official page lotus leaf stalks are added to salads and their seeds taste like almonds. The flowers' roots are pickled and their stamens are dried and turned into tea.

I personally like the beauty of Nelumbo Nucifera flowers. Large and unusually shaped they are of tender pink and vanilla hues. A dried seed cup looks like an alien spaceship and with no doubt could be turned into a great house decoration.