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Felted Toadstool Keyring These are very cute and easy to do, and good introduction to making 3D needle felt. You will need: Hand scoured wool and Merino roving in a variety of colours Felting mat/foam Felting needle Keyring 1. Place your foam felting pad onto a hard surface, such as a tray or a table and lay out your supplies.  Run the wool through your fingers - you will notice a distinct difference between the two types of wool.  The red merino is much softer than the coarser white wool.  We will be using the white wool first. 2. Pinch off a piece of your white wool, and draw it out between your hands to make a long narrow piece.  Starting at one end, begin to roll it up like a bandage.                                            3. Roll the wool as tightly as possible, so that the roll is quite firm.  Poke the needle into the roll every couple of turns to help it to stick together.  When the roll is complete, you should have something shaped
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Needle felting, First Beginner project: Needled Landscape

Needle felted landscapes are a great way to begin, as they have loads of scope for creativity whilst being simple epicnough to increase confidence and pick up new techniques.  To start a landscape, begin with the basic felting instructions for making a piece of flat felt.  When you have your piece, you can begin to build on it: 1.  Take a few wisps of blue roving and lay then across the top half of your white wool.  Needle them into position in such a way that they suggest the sky.  If you would like a deeper blue to your sky, simply lay a few more wisps over the top of this, and needle again until you reach the point where you are happy with your sky. 2.  Across the bottom of your white wool, place some green wool and needle this into position.  It can be quite satisfying to use a mixture of green and yellow on this part of the picture too, as this will look as though you have different coloured fields in your final picture.  Don’t worry if the wool overhangs the edge of y

Needle Felting from the Beginning

I've decided to upload all of my current tutorials, so that if anyone who buys a general kit wants to attempt a new project, there's something available and to provide a bit of support to any craft groups who have purchased materials and need workshop resources.  There are a lot of different versions of the same kind of projects out there on the internet - these tutorials are based on the way I do things and have been constructed from scratch without reference to anyone else's materials or resources in an attempt to provide a single, easy to find and access reference point for basically anyone I know. So I'll start here, right at the beginning.. Basic needle felting You will need- Felting needle Foam pad (any firm/ high density block of foam will do, you can cut down upholstery foam and use a block of that if you don't have access to anything else). Merino wool (or any colourful wool roving will do - it doesn't have to be merino) Core or fille

Christmas Baubles part 2 - The Return..

Finally - here's the bauble tutorial I promised you earlier in the week.  I know there's load of different ways of doing them out there, but here is my own personal favourite. 1.  Take a ball of knitting wool.  This can be any type, it doesn’t matter if there’s actually any wool content or not.  The thicker the wool though, the faster you will be able to make the core for your bauble. 2.  Wind the wool around your fingers, until you have a fairly large ‘lump’ then remove from your fingers and wind into a tight ball. 3.  When the ball of yarn is the size which you would like your bauble to be, stop winding the yarn onto it and cut the strand you are winding.   4.Take a piece of wool roving and begin wrapping the yarn ball in the roving.  You need enough roving to completely cover the ball of yarn, so that it doesn’t show through the roving.  Needle the roving into place if necessary. 5. Place the roving wrapped ball of yarn into

Happy Christmas Baubles

I've had a lovely time lately, making these: They're a lot of fun - so much so that I thought I'd do a tutorial for you. I'm very evangelical when it comes to felting you see - I strongly feel that everyone in the world would really enjoy it, if they just gave it one little go.  I may therefore be posting quite a few felting tutorials for you to enjoy.  Of course, I do also sell kits to make these baubles, so give me a shout if you'd like one.  They have full colour instructions written by yours truly, and featuring many pictures of my hand stabbing stuff with a very sharp needle. This bauble with the trees on it is my current favourite, even though when producing the original bauble blank, I managed to make one that wasn't completely round.  I think it just gives it a bit more character.  What do you think? :) I'm also considering using better string to hang them, as I don't think that the embroidery silk looks particularly good.  I&

Felting successes and less than successful felts..

So, incase you were wondering, this is what I've been up to lately...  I'm hugely in love with autumn colours this year.  I've made a load of very autumnal bags and purses, as well as some felted cards.  The sales side of things has been pretty good, but I hate to see these pieces go, as I only make them once.  It must be a bit like seeing your child leave home for the first time.  It's funny but I never consider keeping any of them - it's more that I hope they have a good life with their new family, where ever they end up. All of the bags are wet felted over a resist made from a double thickness of bubble wrap.  I like to use bubble wrap as a resist as I probably massively over water everything when felting, so a waterproof resist is more practical, also with a double layer you can feel where the edges are more easily.  Plus, the little bumps help the piece to felt inside while I'm concentrating on the outside.  Some days, you need all the help you can