It all started here on Etsy
Laurie Sharp has a passion for creating things. When she was young she opted to skip "family tv night" to make tiny things for her very tiny doll, Chrissy. As she grew older she dabbled in drawing, painting, wood sculpting, knitting, crocheting, photography and puppet making. In addition her passion for creating art, Laurie loved working with small children and became an accredited Waldorf kindergarten teacher. It was during her teacher training that she learned the fundamentals of dry felting, or needle felting, with wool.
In 2001, Laurie Sharp started her own Waldorf inspired pre-school. Her curriculum included storytelling with puppet shows and she preferred to create her own puppets. Needle felting gave her the ability to create small characters and animals for story telling and she would often send a few creations home with children. Needle felting in the evening after a day's work was a pleasant and meditative escape but she worked tirelessly to refine her craft and perfect her sculptures.
Eventually her pre-school parents started asking Laurie to make things for their children and encouraged her to teach them how to sculpt with wool. Laurie looked for needle felting kits to assist her learning and teaching and found there were not many instructional kits to be found. Woolpets was born in 2007 out of the passion to create and teach.
Ladybugs, bumblebees, sheep, penguins and hedgehogs were Woolpets' first needle felting kits and they were developed with her husband Kevin Sharp. The first kits sold contained wool from Laurie's own sheep, Hazel and Merna who have retired to greener pastures. Today Woolpets has thirty one needle felting kits in their nest (and counting) and has hatched three instructional needle felting books as well: Wool Pets, Making 20 Figures with Wool Roving and a Barbed Needle (2008); Wool Toys, Step-by-Step Instructions for Needle-Felting Fun (2010) and Felted Feathered Friends, Techniques and Projects for Needle-felted Birds (2012).
Woolpets strives to pass along the fundamentals of needle felting and three dimensional sculpting with wool while bringing joy to those who have a desire to create. Their step-by-step photographs and keen sense of instruction allow almost anyone to learn something new.
