'Time just melts away': Self-taught artist makes hyper-realistic felt creations

Crafted creations: N.B. needle Felter shares work A N.B. needle-felting artist shares her work and explains how she gets inspired by her woodland surroundings.

With each layer of wool and poke of the needle, fibre artist Bella McBride brings her hyper-realistic, whimsical, and one-of-a-kind felted creations to life.

“It’s like a lot of art, you just go and get lost in it,” says McBride. “Hours and hours can go by especially if I’m in a stage where I’m adding the details and time just melts away.”

It’s easy to see just how much time, skill and patience has gone into making each of her personality-filled pieces, which surround her in her studio. Where she only has to look out the window to find ideas for her work.

McBride says she’s inspired by the forests that surround her home, along with her love of animals, and so many of her sculptures are photographed in outdoor settings.

“In the art world, they always want you to, well, not always, but take pictures in white backgrounds,” says McBride. “That doesn’t work for me — they belong outside, by trees and in nature.”

Not only is needle felting now a full-time job for McBride, who is a self-taught artist, it’s also something that has helped her with a difficult diagnosis that came at a young age.

“I’ve had fibromyalgia for half my life…but I’ve always said I’m really grateful that I do have it,” says McBride. “Because I would never have found needle felting without it, I would have never found my passion in life.”

McBride will be selling her work at the Renforth Artisan Market at the Bill McGuire Centre in Rothesay, N.B., on Sunday, May 1 from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

You can also find her work for sale on her website.