Let's make Woolly Pussy Willow Buds.

After a few false starts it seems like Spring is finally here to stay... for a while at least. Yay! The birds are singing, the bulbs are popping and the crisp sunny air is utterly wonderful. Don't tell the other but, at this moment, Spring, you are my favorite season.

I know I'm not alone in thinking that nothing sings Spring more than a Pussy Willow... he must be Spring's lover, don't you think?

So, in celebration of Spring's beauty, we made woolly Pussy Willow branches for our home.


All we needed for this pretty craft was:
* a few sticks
* white wool roving (yarn will do too)
* my trusty hot glue gun

Kitty is my master wet felter and she was excited to make the little wool puffs.
She started by pulling off a small (quarter size) piece of wool roving.


Then she dipped the tips of her fingers in warm soapy water and rubbed her hands together to make them slightly damp.


She then rubbed the little wool puffs in her damp hands... around and around, until they became perfect pussy willow buds. Each puff took her less than a minute to make.


This is an easy felting project for a young person as it is quick and doesn't have to be at all perfect.


As you can see, the little wool puff is only roughly felted.


Once Kitty had done all of the wet felting and the little wool puffs had dried in the sun for a while, I stuck them onto our sticks with my hot glue gun.


Oh, they do look so very pretty. In fact, we are fighting over them... Kitty wants them to go in her room but I want them on the dining room table. I have a feeling Kitty is going to win this argument... after all, as she has pointed out, it was she who did most of the work to make them.


Happy Spring, Friends :-)
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Tutorial - Needle Felted Toadstool.

I am so excited to share a tutorial on needle felting. So many of you have shown interest in giving it a go and I encourage you to dive right in. Those others of you who are hooked will agree, it is such a fun hobby and you'll be amazed at the things you can make. When I picked up my first needle three years ago, I was surprised at how quickly I took to it. One of the things I love most about needle felting is that you can finish a project in one sitting. You can sit down with a basket of wool and be holding a delightful bunny in your hands an hour later. Of course, you can make wonderfully elaborate creations that take hours and hours but you can also make something in twenty minutes too. I like that.

This is a tutorial on how to make sweet, needle felted toadstools... a simple and fast project for beginner needle felting.

Equipment - Needle felting requires three tools; wool roving, a felting needle and a protective foam board.

Wool roving looks like cotton candy. When the sheep is sheered, the fleece is washed and dried and then it is 'carded' - brushed so that all the knots and clumps are brushed out and the fibers of the wool all run the same way. It is then dyed... any wonderful color under the sun :-)
This roving can then be spun into yarn (for knitting) or it can be felted.


The protective foam board is not absolutely necessary but it is definitely recommended when you are learning to needle felt. The needle is very sharp and if you don't have a board upon which to steady your work, you will find yourself painfully stabbed more than once.


The felting needle is about 3 inches long. As I said before, it is very sharp. The tip of the needle has a number of small barbs and it is these barbs that felt the wool. It works because the outer surface of each fiber of wool has tiny, microscopic scales on it. When the fiber is agitated, the scales hook into one another, forming a tighter and tighter mass. The needle works because the barbs of the needle 'grab' the fibers as you stab it into the wool, depositing the fibers deeper into the wool. The little scales on the fibers lock together, ensuring that the fibers stay in their new place. By stabbing the wool hundreds of times with your needle, you have control over the form of your wool and can shape it as you wish. You can see the barbs clearly in this next photo...


To make a toadstool, break off a length of red wool roving about the length of your hand.


Roll it between your hands as you would roll a ball of playdough into a snake.


Roll the wool 'snake' into a tight spiral. The tighter you can get it, the easier it will be to felt.


I find that rolling is key in many of my felting projects... if I can roll the wool tightly to begin with, I can greatly reduce the time my form takes to felt.


When my red wool has been rolled into a tight spiral, I set it down on the felting board and stab it with the needle many times around the outside of the spiral. Be slow and deliberate with your stabbing in the beginning, and concentrate, please... it hurts like getting an injection when you stab yourself... it's definitely not the end of the world, but it is better avoided :-)


You will soon see that this stabbing holds the wool in place and your spiral will not unravel if you let it go.


Now for the underside of the toadstool. Set your spiral upright and stab the top gently many times so that it becomes a nice flat surface.


When your underside is nice and flat, turn your spiral over to what will be the top side of your toadstool. With your thumb and forefinger, gently pull the outside layer of wool a loose, just a little.


Fold this pulled layer over the spiral shape and needle felt it gently.


Continue needle felting it until it is a smooth round dome.


Now for the white spots. Get a small tuft of white wool roving about the size of your fingernail.


Roll it in the palms of your hands until it becomes a nice firm ball.


Place the white ball onto the red toadstool and needle felt it into the red wool.


Needle felt as many dots as you'd like onto your toadstool.


Now for the toadstool's stalk. Take a piece of white wool as long as your finger and roll it in your hands until it becomes a 'snake' (as before).


Roll it tightly into a spiral (just like you did with your red wool to start your toadstool).


Put the stalk onto the felting board and felt it around the outside until it is firmly felted and holds its shape.


Leave one end of the stalk fluffy. Gently needle felt the other end of the stalk until it is round.


Place the fluffy end of the stalk onto the underside of your toadstool (the flat side) and attach it by needle felting it into the red wool of the toadstool.


Gently felt around and around the stalk until it if firmly and neatly secured.


Voila! You have made a darling little toadstool!!


For those of you who want to give this a try, I've put together a needle felting toadstool kit and listed it in my shop. In the kit you will get two needle felting needles, a protective foam board and all the red and white wool you will need to make 10 little toadstools (or 4 bigger ones).
I also have beginner's needle felting kits with lots of gorgeously colored wool if you'd prefer to try your hand at something different now that you know how easy it is. And, I have felted rock kits and felted soap kits available too. And, and, I have also put together a kit for making your child a felted playscape which is a fantastic project. So, no excuse not to try needle felting if you aren't already hooked :-) C'mon... it'll be fun!

Happy felting,
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Interview with an Etsy Mom - Skipping Stones.

Patti, from Skipping Stones, has been a Magic Onions sponsor for over a year and I'm sure most of you have popped over to her shop button (situated in the right column of my blog on every page) and entered her gorgeous shop.


For those of you who haven't yet, you are in for a treat as I have asked Patti to tell us a little about herself and show us a few of her gorgeous creations. Welcome, Patti!

* * *

I grew up in California. I was always pretty crafty as a kid. My mother used to paint and my father loved landscape design, although he worked as a judge and she was in education so might have influenced me. I took my first sewing class in 4th grade. After high school, I earned an AA degree in Fashion Design from FIDM, and I worked in the fashion industry in Los Angeles in my early 20’s but I soon became disenchanted knocking off junior sportswear and in a few years I decided to go back to school.

I majored in fine art majored in Fine Art and got an MFA. I did my undergrad work at UCLA and my graduate work at UC Irvine. In school, I worked a lot with sculpture and explored concepts like the natural vs. the artificial found everywhere society today in things like manufacturing, entertainment, medicine and art. With my sculptures, I was into a sort of lowbrow, low tech manufacturing. Like, I made copies of my body parts in repetition - like a huge piles of 1000 beeswax casts of my mouth in various positions, tongue sticking out , and smiling frowning, etc. I also made hundreds of artificial flowers with some with tiny odd “genetic mutations” added.

I began jewelry making after the birth of my first child. We were living in Los Angeles and I wanted to stay home with him .


I needed a creative outlet and I was also was hoping to earn a bit of money, so, I began to experiment with jewelry design.


I taught myself beading and wire wrapping and then I began to play with felt. I joined ETSY in the summer of 2005.

I found I love to work with felt- embellishing it with beads and embroidery.


Most of my work is inspired by nature I love layer and juxtapose color to create a mood for each piece. I usually use wool felt or a wool felt blend in my pieces.


I still use a lot of repetition in my process like the sewing of tiny seed beads around the edges of many of my pieces. I love to include vintage materials in my work- like Lucite flowers that show up on a lot of brooches.



Today, I try to make jewelry whenever I can but I work at night a lot since just had another boy in 2010.


I live in Northern California with my family where we just bought our first home. I am probably happiest when I doing something creative like decorating our new digs, crafting with my kids, cooking and gardening. I am trying to convert my big weedy backyard into a flower and vegetable garden.

In the near future, I want to start painting again (watercolor and gouache) and I have been thinking I may try making and selling some items for the home. I am also dreaming about the possibility of going back to school for a degree in elementary education (primary) or special education with an emphasis on early childhood. I love working with young children and I feel I can apply my creativity to lessons in the classroom. Still, I will probably keep on making jewelry because I absolutely love doing it so much.

* * *

Thank you for sharing your story with us, Patti. I so love finding out how other moms have done it... it's motivating to me to know that the people I admire on Etsy, and elsewhere, are moms just like me. I hope Patti's insights can inspire other creative moms out there to follow their hearts and share their art with the world :-) We are a powerful community because our beliefs are strong, we support each other and we know that what we are doing is meaningful.

Please, wonderful readers, pop over to Patti's shop, Skipping Stones, and mark her as a favorite so that you can find her again easily when you need that special gift for a loved one.

I have a few sponsorship spots available... if you are interested in becoming a Magic Onions sponsor, send me an email ( vined (at) ymail (dot) com

Blessings and magic,
Donni

How to make colorful, wet felted stones.

We made some

gorgeously colorful wet felted stones

yesterday. It was an activity that both my children (5 and 2) could do together. They both have played for ages with their stones and I delight in watching them focus their imaginations on something their own hands created.

We needed some clean stones, colorful wool roving and some warm, soapy water (we used dish detergent).

I used my felting needle to secure the wool in place. This is not necessary but did make things easier for them as it helped the wool to stay in place in the beginning. This activity can definitely be done without using the needle, just use a little more care at the beginning of the wet felting process.

Try not to fight over the stones at the very start... but then, if some sibling rivalry didn't raise it's head, your mother might faint with surprise! So, fight away, if you must...

Chose a color of wool. Divide the wool into two strips. Start wrapping the stone with one of the strips, like this...

Make sure the wool wraps over its self, like this...

Then the 'tufty' sides wrap over, like this...

place the second wool strip in your hand. Place the stone you have just wrapped on top of it, unsecured side down, like this...

Wrap as before.

You can start the wet felting process now or you can needle felt the wool into place to make the wet felting process a little easier.

Your wrapped stone is now ready for the wet felting process...

Dip it in the warm, soapy water.

Begin wet felting by gently rubbing the stone. K pointed out that it felt like she was making mud pies. The wool is all squishy at first and it's important to agitate the stone very gently in your hands so that it remains evenly covered with your wool.

Once you feel the wool firming up over your stone, you can start rubbing it more vigorously. The soap, warm water and agitation makes the wool fibers intertwine and hook together, shrinking them and making them lock tightly over your stone.

When the wool is tightly wet felted over your stone, it's time for rinsing...

You want to rinse all the soap from the wool. As you can see from the expression on T's face, this is a VERY important and serious task...

Squeeze the excess water from your clean, felted rocks and put them in a sunny spot to dry.

Aren't they beautiful...

K has used her pretty stones in her play scenes and even just played with them as if they were the characters from her imagination. T has lined them up, switching the colors around, and stacked them to make a pretty tower.

I made myself a set too... they sit in the center of my table to bring the color and feel of the outdoors to into our house... They are so pretty, I doubled up and mede a set for my Etsy shop too.

For another wet felting activity to do with your kids, look at this amazing wet felted nest project.

Blessings and magic.

ps - I get my felting supplies (wool and needles) from Weir Dolls - http://weirdolls.com