Have you ever wanted an exotic pet but didn’t want to deal with the mess that pets leave behind?
Maybe a wool animal is for you!
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Russian artist and mother of two, Anna Yastrezhembovskaya can make your dreams come true.
Anna uses nothing but wool and a special punch needle to create the most amazing lifelike creatures. From hedgehogs to birds, and even cute little bats, Anna works each piece until she is satisfied that if you saw it in the wild you would think it is real.
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The process started when she decided she wanted to make toys for her children and sky rocketed from there.
Anna admits that her first attempt at a woolen toy creature did not go so well, she says that it was in fact rather funny looking. That didn’t stop her though, she enjoyed the process so much that she decided to try again. And again, and again until, eventually, she became a master at making the creatures look totally lifelike.
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Anna became so good at creating felted woolen birds that she started getting commissions from people online.
Chickadees, sparrows, and even owls became so popular that Anna was spending 12-14 hours per day, every day to keep up with the demand. However, when her daughter asked her to make a small bat brooch, she lovingly obliged and started working on that immediately.
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Though the bat was too big to be used as a brooch, her daughter still loved it and ended up posting pictures online.
Apparently, the rest of the world loved that bat too and everyone wanted one for themselves. Anna, however, was still working on her bird commissions and so that bats would have to wait.
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That was until other online stores stole the images of Anna’s wool bat and sold them online.
Not only did they do this but they linked everyone back to Anna’s Instagram account so, upon opening her Instagram a few days later, there were hundreds of orders for the bat that wasn’t even for sale. And not only did these other people sell her design and put her on the hook to make them all, they were sold for only $19.99.
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Each bat takes 10 days, working 12-14 per day, to create making them worth far more than a measly $20.
At the end of the day, Anna had to reach out to each buyer individually and inform them of what had happened, she did this with the help of her sister who hated seeing Anna so distressed over the situation. While some people understood what had happened, others thought it was in fact Anna who was the scammer.
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After letting each buyer know about the situation, Anna decided she wanted to take some time away from making the bats.
While she was very happy that so many people liked her design, she had a backlog of other projects that she wanted to work on. Anna’s main interest in felting was to create beautiful, brightly colored birds, and she wanted to get back to that.
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Check out Anna’s adorable creations on her Instagram page.
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