Left: Shortly after posting her felt-made portraits on Instagram, Sidney got her first commission – from a past high school friend – to create a montage of nine famous musicians. Right: While making crafts with her children during the 2020 pandemic quarantine, she pulled out an old box of felt, made her own self-portrait, and posted it on Instagram.

She was, however, inspired by the then-trending “say yes” mini-movement (inspired by TV producer Shonda Rhimes’ book, Year of Yes) that encouraged her to “say yes to everything for a year and your life will change.” So, she said yes to 700 commissions that first year.

“No commission was too big or too small. This kept me very, very busy for the first few years.”

However, she admits that “I’m not business minded,” so turning her art into a business came with a huge learning curve, such as how to form an LLC, create a business bank account, and more. She hired someone to create a website, but she did all the shipping, emailing, filling orders, etc. And oh, yeah — she created all that art.

“Looking back, I would say I did too much. It was hard to be present in the moment with my family and friends. I was always checking messages and Instagram. Currently things are at a more manageable pace, but I did feel like I needed to say yes to everything in the beginning to help me grow my business.”

She finds felt the perfect medium for her because unlike many artists, “I don’t like getting too messy and I like having a tidy workspace.” With felt, she says, she has “all the bright colors of paint or markers but none of the mess.”

Also, she says, cutting and gluing felt is “a precise art form,” which she finds appealing.

With a background in illustration work, it’s not surprising that buildings (Waffle House,   houses) are her favorite design projects. “There’s something about the details that I really enjoy, and all the straight lines make it pretty simple. I also like making food. I think (food is) fun and colorful and nostalgic for people.”

Faces are trickier to create in felt, she notes.

“When drawing or painting portraits, you need to get the shape of the face and the features right, or the piece falls short. But with felt, there’s no blending or shading. It’s literally all about the cuts and the shapes.”

While she does make portraits of celebrities, which she sells on her website as well as at Charleston Artist Collective in South Carolina, today she rarely takes commissions for personal portraits because “it’s too hard to capture the likeness of someone I never met. Trying to create a portrait of somebody’s child or parent is difficult because I don’t know the person. Celebrities, however, are easier because I feel like you know them through the media.”

When creating her felt art, Sidney usually starts with the foundation, building up layers of the design piece-by-piece, cutting pieces freehand and gluing them together. Her designs run the gamut from celebrity portraits to animals, food, iconic buildings, houses, and everyday objects.

When crafting portraits, Sidney might sketch the shape of a nose or a mouth, but mostly she cuts all of her designs freehand – no stencils, no patterns, no rulers – just her and her scissors.  She uses so-called Korean felt, which is thinner and stiffer than what you’d find in a craft store, which Sidney says makes it more like paper — easier to cut, manipulate, and adhere using a hot glue gun. This durable felt, which is also used for industrial purposes, is usually made from wool, synthetic fibers, and recycled polyester, and is prized for its durability, bright colorfast hues, versatility, and smooth texture.

While she mostly takes commissioned work, “once in a while I’ll come up with an idea in my head and I’ll have to make it. Those are usually the best pieces because they come from the heart.”

But “as somebody who loves a to-do list, I enjoy the structure of having a commission list because it gives me direction.”

These days, she usually takes only four or five commissions at a time, working on each one separately, creating about one piece a week. “I don’t like people waiting more than a month or two,” she explains. “At one point I had 150 people on a waitlist and it was very overwhelming.” Depending on the complexity of a piece, it could take from a few hours to a few days to complete one project.

And since she works in a small studio in the Charleston, S.C. home she shares with her cardiologist husband and four children ages 19, 17, 15 and 7, working on more than one piece at a time would be “too chaotic.”

Instagram was instrumental in her business growth, but In December 2022, she hit a major snag – her Instagram account was unexpectedly deleted.

“Almost all of my business was fueled through Instagram. It was a total shock. I was so upset. I felt like everything that I built was gone. I believe it was falsely accused of copyright (infringement).” With a friend’s help, her account was eventually reinstated, but it took a few months and “things definitely slowed down.”

But there was a bright side. “I realized how often I was checking (Instagram); it definitely was an addiction. It sounds crazy, but I believe the universe was telling me that I needed to slow down and take a break.”

While working with felt may have some limitations, Sidney, who still does some of the illustration work she loves, is pleased to see how her art has evolved.

“Over the years my work has gotten bigger, more detailed, and I think overall a little more mature. There was something about the initial pieces that I look back on and love because they were more playful, but I feel like the pieces now are more precise.”

And the felt work, she adds, seems to have made her illustration work better.

The best part about creating, she says, “is getting lost in the time. When you really get in the creative zone is best. It’s a great way to zone out, put the phone down, and just have fun with the materials.”

And that felt good.

Roberta G. Wax

contributor