(Natalia Tolstykina – NatalyTools)

A Memorable and Magical Menagerie

by Pam North

Natalia Tolstykina was born in a little town between Siberia and the Ural region in Russia in 1975. Her grandmother knitted, and her mother sewed clothes beautifully, and both passed their skills on to her. She studied at university, then worked in the field of financial management for a long time before she realized that she wished to devote herself entirely to creativity. In addition to her family life with her husband and two teen-aged daughters, she now can indulge her love of drawing, reading, listening to music, and making delightful soft-sculpture animals.
In her early years she had started sewing simple toys from faux fur, making her first bear when she was just 8 years old. As time passed, her teddies began to evolve somewhat, but it was in 2007, when she was 32 years old and she discovered cotter pins and jointing, that things really began to develop for her artistry. Since that time, she has created hundreds of bears which have found homes all over the world. Her animal species spectrum is not limited to brown and black bears; she also has made polar bears, rabbits, sloths, lions, rhinos, wolves, koalas, pigs, pandas, mice, mandrills, monkeys, donkeys, foxes, elk, elephants, dogs, cats, kittens, okapis, loris, lemurs, hyenas, and hedgehogs. Her somewhat caricature style in fashioning her animals gives them delightful and whimsical personalities, imbued with her unique style, and her skillful blending of colors and fabrics adds a special artistic appeal. She also offers patterns for sale for several of these animal varieties, tempting would-be artists to try their own hand at creating soft-sculpture critters.
While she always had been good at sewing from a young age, Natalia had no formal training in crafting animals; this she acquired by studying avidly on her own, and also learning from other artists willing to share their pwn special techniques. “I watched Paula Carter embroider bear noses, or Denise Purrington making a skeleton for her bears,” she explained. “I am very grateful to them that they shared these processes and skills as I learned so much.”
Evolving in their craft is the goal of most artists, and various forces inspire that. For Natalia, the major factors driving her are her willingness to evolve. and also her clients. “I never am held back by or locked into what I already am comfortable doing; I embrace new concepts with all my heart, but I also allow my clients to influence me. They come to me with orders for things that I have not attempted before, and I have to find solutions on how to make those new ideas actually become reality.”
Looking to the future, she continued, “I don't want to cheat or take the easy path by simply adapting to what is currently popular in the market. For example, I will not make realistic tigers like so many others do. Instead, I will, as always, create what I like, and in that process increasingly continue to improve my skills every year.”
Materials are important in any craft, and choices made in what they are and how they are used are essential to the success of any artist’s work. Natalia uses only the very best materials. “I love mohair and viscose from German manufacturers, but I also use vintage Soviet plush. Other materials encompass artificial suede, glass eyes with wool eyelids, some synthetic fabrics, plush, cotter-pins and cardboard disks for jointing, polymer clay for noses, wire in the upper paws for flexibility, fiberfill, and metal pellets.”
An artist’s work is a source of both challenges and satisfaction, and Natalia cited hers. “The hardest part for me is making my work as close as possible to what is in life, and also taking taking photos of them. Also, tightening the cotter pins makes my hands hurt, and my fingers often do not obey me, so I ask my husband to help me with the cotter pins. What I love most is doing eyes. The eyes are what my customers look at, and through their eyes my creatures are looking for a new someone to love them, and a new home.”
Natalia has the fortunate luxury of a workspace of her own. “I have a separate room in our apartment; it is very small, but there I can fully enjoy working on my own. It has a huge work desk, lots of storage boxes, and shelves with teddy bears and dolls from other artists. Yes, I collect a little, and I really love having my collection around me.”
She has received about a dozen awards in various competitions, including Toby and BCA awards since 2010, but for her they are not the main thing. “I never count them, and do not focus on participating anywhere. My main reward is the love of my collectors, and that is what I find immeasurably valuable.”
She has conducted about 30 online master classes, as well as live master classes in her city and others in Russia, recording those training classes for future use, and now sells them in her store on Etsy. For the last two years she has not been conducting training due to lack of time to implement her ideas. “I need more time and hands!” she remarked.
She sells her products through Tedsby and Facebook. “I have a good base of my regular collectors who have been with me for many, many years,” she said.
As for inspiration, she shared her main sources. “I love nature and drawings by cartoonists, and those sources offer an incredibly huge field of inspiration from which to draw.”
She is optimistic about the future and direction of artist-made bears and animals. “I think interesting artists always will be valuable assets to the world. Of course, we are not going to pretend everything we make should be in world museums, but nevertheless there now is a tendency toward a better assessment of handmade things than there was several decades ago. I hope there always will be more collectors who do not have one of my animals in their homes, and that they will add their names to my list of orders, and that their interest will never fade away.”
As a last thought she added, “I feel that everything that artists around the world do is a great force; it is the unification of all peoples, and through the friendship between artists and collectors, we make this world better and kinder. It has always been so, and may it always be so.”

Contact Information:
Name: Natalia Tolstykina
Business name if any: NatalyTools
Email: natalytools@gmail.com
Websites: https://www.facebook.com/natalytools, https://natalytools.tedsby.com/
Instagram: https://instagram.com/natalytools.ru/
Address: Russia, Kurgan
Telephone: +79128364777