I made this! - Felt Buttons

Just a quick post to show off my new felt buttons - love making these!!

Thinking of making them into brooches, hair clips etcs.

What does everyone think?

Needle Felting

For those who have seen my flickr photos recently you may have noticed my latest obsession - needle felting!

I received a book for Christmas called "little felted animals" by Marie-Noëlle Horvath (click here for the Amazon link), and this inspired me to try my hand at needle felting, which up until then I had been completely ignorant about if I'm totally honest!

For those who may equally be in the dark, in simple terms needle felting is the art of making shapes out of wool fibres (carded or combed). You need a special felting needle for this which has little barbs which cause the wool fibres to knit together when you jab into the wool with it. I bought myself a little starter kit on ebay (click here for the listing link) which is ideal for beginners.

Above I have shown some of the things I have made this week. My first item was the mouse (Marty) who wasn't initially supposed to be a mouse but just an experiment, but strangely enough a mouse started to appear!! Then I made a toadstool - just because I love toadstools!! Then I made a piece of cheese for Marty, see the steps below which show how this turned from a cloud of yellow wool into a slightly strange looking piece of emmental!! My last piece was a corsage flower which I attached happily to my new grey woolly jacket today - can't wait to make more of these, can see these being a favourite of mine!!

You can buy so many different colours of wool - or if you are feeling adventurous you can dye your own - might leave this to the experts though!!

The great thing about needle felting is how quick and easy it is. You will probably end up stabbing yourself a few times along the way as you do jab quite quickly once you get the hang of it - but it helps to keep your eye on the ball!! Before I started, I watched a few videos about needle felting on Youtube as I couldn't quite believe that all you had to do is jab at the wool - it seemed too easy!! And there are no hard and fast rules, just the more you jab the denser the shape gets - simples!!

There are some amazing felt artists out there such as Kit Lane, Lil Fish Studios (Lisa Jordan) and Vria Lee (Victor Dubrovsky) to name but a few - please do check out their links - you will be amazed!!

I made this! - Christmas Cards!

Wanted to attempt to make some of my own cards this year for my family. Of course somehow I had to incorporate some fabric. After a few unsuccessful experiments I decided to use this simple tree design which was machine "embroidered" in several colourful threads before being cut into the tree shapes.

I then stitched the felt to the front of the card and hand sewed the wooden sequins on to finish!!

Really happy with how these turned out - bright and colourful and simple!!

Less than two weeks to go now!!

x

I made this!! Christmas Stockings!!

So it's my first proper Christmas as a crafter - last year my craftiest effort was using brown paper and making my own button gift tags. Seemed like a good idea at the time but over a hundred presents later it became a little tedious!!

This year I will be buying my gift wrap but making a few presents and decorations instead!!

I've started off with the essential stocking - bought a couple metres of thick red felt (why is this so expensive!?) and a few machine blanket stitches and finishing touches later there are stockings!! The beauty of using felt is that you don't need to worry about linings or right and wrong sides or fraying!! Really like the naive look (I'm good at that!!)