Fantastic felting tutorial

As promised here is a felting tutorial.  I have created 2 items, a mini piece of art and a 3d heart.  The mini art (of course that totally depends on your idea of art! lol) uses a piece of felt as a background.  the mini heart is a stand alone piece.

Felting on felt!

This is a little freehand creation I made.  It's great to practise techniques and quite quick to create too!

You will need a sponge (I used a cheap one for car cleaning (needs to be totally clean)) a piece of felt, a pen, a felting needle and of course lovely wools!

Step 1 - I drew a very basic design on my felt.  You could stamp an image on it if you would rather or just draw lines depending on how desperate you are to start and your artistic confidence.

Step 2 - take a small piece of your wool (you can easily add to it after) and lay it over the section you are going to start felting on.

Step 3 - grab your needle and start stabbing it!  Make sure each time you push the needle through that you are also going into the sponge!  Also make sure you are stabbing the area you wish to and most importantly don't stab your fingers!!!  The reason behind felting on a sponge is that you can then pull your piece away.  The wool doesn't attach itself in the same way that it does to the felt so once you have finished you can reuse the sponge again and again!

Here you can just about see how I am using the needle to trace around the line I drew earlier.  I decided at this point that I wasn't going to fill this wave section, instead I wanted to just trace around the edge.  If you run out of wool, just add more until you have filled the area you wish.

Here I have lifted up the felt so you can see what it is like behind!  It is all tufty but comes away from the sponge easily enough.

Step 5 - add your next colour.  Here you can just see that I have added a white to my wave section.  Make sure you stab all the wool!  

Step 6 - keep adding your colours.  You may notice that on my original drawing I had triangles going around one edge and a dot.  I decided that the best thing to do was to fill in the colours first and then add details on top.

Step 7 - add details.  Here I have curled up a tiny bit of wool and then plan to stab it until it is flat.

Here you can see I have also put in the triangles.  (these were a little ambitious if I'm honest! It's harder to create small straight lines like that but I am pleased with how they turned out.

3d heart

(Sorry the photos are a bit dark for this one.)

You will need a felting needle, wool, a sponge and a cookie cutter.  This cutter is a mini heart for cake decorating.

Step 1 - Fill your cutter with wool.

Step 2 - stab repeatendly (I realise all this stabbing sounds a bit out of place on a non-murder related post!  I couldn't think of a different word)

Step 3 - Once you think your piece has flattened well take out of the cutter and see how the back is.

The back of mine was very tufty so I put it back in, this time the wrong way round and repeated the stabbing process.

Eventually I was happy with both sides!  Here it is all finished and removed.  I could then give it to my valentine!

I have created another little felty project but can't show you that one yet so will save that for another day!  

In other news this week, I have been making quilling papers for a One-off Crafty What Nots box!  Aren't the colours just so wonderful!!!

Hope you have been having a wonderfully creative week and if you fancy winning a Crafty What Nots box why not pop over to my facebook page  to enter my giveaway. 

Well I'm off now to explore other crafty blogs at Handmade Monday!

xxx

February's Crafty What Nots ~ J'adore

It has been a week of hiding under the duvet for me! Bugs everywhere and yes I caught them!!!
It is that time of the month yet again to show you what was in the latest Crafty What Nots mystery postal craft box! This months theme was J'Adore!  Love was oozing out of each box!!

(as you can see I have how to make collages!)  This shows the contents as well as some of the inspirational ideas that could be created!

As you can see there were lots of lovely crafty goodies included this month.

This month tutorial was to make this really cute quilled heart and to help each box came with a handmade personalised quilling tool!  I love making these.

I have also created a new website, just dedicated to Crafty What Nots, this is the new home to reviews, questions and news as well as where people will be able to buy boxes.

In other crafty news, I had a go at felting this week.  I had felted a few polystyrene eggs before but never felted freehand (no pic of this one I'm afraid) or tried directly on felt!  I was pretty chuffed with the results!  What do you think? I need a lot of practise but stabbing something for a couple of hours was surprisingly satisfying!!

I thought I would leave you with my Happy Friday moment (as I had missed last weeks as well as Handmade Monday)

Here is my youngest milking a pretend cow at our local animal farm.  We visit regularly and love the variety of animals.  The things she enjoys the most however, is the fake cow and the little vardo that she can hide in!

Well that's it from me.  Hopefully normal blogging will resume next week! I'm off now to visit these lovely linky parties and see what other fab bloggers have been up to.  

xx