Friday 6 June 2014

Needles, wool and the blue duck...

needle felting

Time has once again whizzed by with one thing and another and for the last week or so I've been getting absorbed in a new craft. Do you remember I posted a teaser pic of some wool fiber I bought... well I thought I'd update you on how I've been getting on with it!



A visit to a lovely local craft shop had reminded me about a wet felting kit I bought a while back but hadn't been very interested in but, I had been wondering about needle felting so when I saw all the accessories in the shop I couldn't resist!

I bought a few more colours of wool that I didn't have in the kit...




and a few of the special needles you need...



I also tried out a couple of different types of needle felting 'mats' to see what the difference was;  one is soft like a sponge and one is more like polystyrene (to be honest I tend to swop about between both with no real preference at the moment)


  
One of my first experiments was a simple little felt heart. I know some people use cookie cutters to help with the shaping but I just did this one by eye.... I also learnt very quickly that you have to be careful with those needles.. they are very sharp!


blue felted heart

I feel it needs a bit more embellishment to really finish it off but, eager to try something else,  I then made the little blue 'duck' pictured at the top (it started out with the intention of being a bird but decided to take on its own life form!)

As I began to get the hang of it,  I wanted to try something larger so made four huge individual poppy petals that were then joined together to make large flower. I'm thinking I'll add a clip to the back and a large vintage button for the centre to finish it off...


large handmade poppy clip

I do love the brightness of poppies so I also made this little poppy fields picture brooch which was embellished with some simple black stitches...


needle felt poppy brooch


and finally, with today being the 70th anniversary of D-Day, I was inspired to make a smaller lapel poppy that has been embellished with jet black crystals and seed beads.


poppy brooch

It's actually quite addictive and it's great to have something different to play with - I can't wait to experiment more :)



Happy Making!




All pictures & text (c) Addicted to Making 2014


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