Fairyfolk Needle Felting Kit :: Spring Nest

www.fairyfolk.etsy.com 

I am so excited to share this Spring robin's nest needle felting tutorial with you. Even if you've never needle felted before, you'll be amazed at how quickly and easily you can make this little treasure.

  
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 if you look closely at the tip of your needle. 

This tutorial will show how to make a sweet robins nest... a simple and fast project for beginner needle felting.

Start by breaking the blue wool into three strips of roughly the same size... as you can see from the photo, the lengths should be about double the width of your hand.

Roll each strip between your hands as you would if you were rolling a ball of playdough into a snake.

With your forefinger and thumb, roll the wool 'snake' into a tight spiral. The tighter you can get it, the easier it will be to felt.

Tip: 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 the  blue 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 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 the spiral will not unravel if you let it go.

To round the ends so that your creation starts to look like an egg, gently loosen the the outside layer of wool  around the spiral by pulling it with your thumb and forefinger. Fold this pulled layer over the spiral edge and needle felt it gently. Needle felt the edges until your shape becomes a smooth round ball.

 Roll your ball in your hands as if you were rolling a marble in your hands... this will help shape your ball. Then needle felt it again into the egg shape you want.  Continue with the other strips of blue wool, following the same technique for each egg.

 Now that your eggs are ready, they need a mossy nest to nestle comfortably in. First, we need to tie our twine onto the edge of the nest so that it will hang nicely. Thread the twine through a strand of vine and fasten it with a knot. Do the same for the other side, making sure that your nest hangs straight before making the second knot.



Now we need to line the nest with moss. Take about a handful of mossy green wool and gently pull it so that it makes a rough circle. Gently flatten it between your hands.

Place this green wool over the nest and push it into the hollow of the nest.

 Needle felt the wool gently into the nest. Remember to keep your nest on the protective foam board as your needle will sometimes go all the way through the nest and you don't want the nest to be sitting on your lap when the needle pokes through the bottom! Ouch!

 You will see that as you gently needle felt the wool into the strands of the nest, the nest indent will become more and more pronounced, making a lovely hollow for the sweet little eggs to nestle in.

In go the three little robins eggs and Voila! What a sweet Spring nest you have made. Just perfect for hanging from your chandelier, twig tree on your nature table or anywhere else in your home that is ready to welcome in the Spring.
 

I have other needle felting kits available in my shop too if you wish to try something else... felted pebbles for lovely home decor, felted pumpkins, felted hearts, felted wreaths, felted balls as well as kits of lovely colored wool for you to make whatever your heart desires. Please visit my shop Fairyfolk to see them all and look under the 'Needle Felting Kits' section.

Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any felting questions.

Happy Spring crafting, 

Blessings and magic, 

Donni

Please visit my other spaces...

Blog: www.themagiconions.blogspot.com

Fairyfolk Shop: www.fairyfolk.etsy.com

Photography Gallery: www.doviemoon.etsy.com

Fairyfolk Weddings: www.fairyfolkweddings.etsy.com

Toadstools

Tutorial : Needle Felted Toadstools

I am so excited to share a tutorial on needle felting. You have shown interest in giving it a go and I encourage you to dive right in. 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 toadstool 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 tutorial (and others like it) is published on my blog, The Magic Onions, in color if you'd rather follow the color, online, directions... www.themagiconions.blogspot.com (search: needle felted toadstools).
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 if you look closely at the tip of your needle.

Making Toadstools:

For the red top of the 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.
Tip: 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.

To connect the stalk to yolace 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!!


I hope you have enjoyed this needle felting project. You have enough wool in your kit to make many little toadstools :-)

I have other needle felting kits available in my shop if you wish to try something new... felted pebbles for lovely home decor, felted pumpkins, felted balls as well as kits of lovely colored wool for you to make whatever your heart desires. Please visit my shop
www.fairyfolk.etsy.com and look under the Kits section.

For more tutorials, please visit my blog The Magic Onions (www.themagiconions.blogspot.com) I have a page dedicated to needle felting with a number of detailed tutorials… how to make needle felted toadstools, pumpkins, hearts, pebbles and others.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.

Blessings and magic,

Donni

Blog: www.themagiconions.blogspot.com

Shop: www.fairyfolk.etsy.com

Shop: www.DovieMoon.etsy.com

Hearts

 Fairyfolk Needle Felting Kits - www.fairyfolk.etsy.com

I am so excited to share another tutorial on needle felting. 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 a needle be holding a few beautiful  felted hearts in your hands half 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 tutorial (and others like it) is published on my blog, The Magic Onions, in color if you'd rather follow the color, online, directions... www.themagiconions.blogspot.com (search: needle felted hearts).

This is a tutorial on how to make needle felted hearts. We use a cookie cutter for the shape, making this 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. And, for the hearts, we use a cookie cutter.

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 if you look closely at the tip of your needle. 

 Break off a piece of wool about three times the size of the cookie cutter.

 Set the cookie cutter on the protective foam mat.

Starting at the center top of the heart shape, line the heart cookie cutter with wool.

 Prod the wool until it is all inside the cookie cutter.

 When the wool is inside the cookie cutter, use your needle to gently and evenly poke at the wool. Hold the cookie cutter with the thumb and forefinger of your left hand and needle felt with your right hand. You will see that the wool becomes compacted the more you poke at it. Poke evenly, giving particular attention to the outline of the heart.

As you poke close to the outline of the cookie cutter, be sure to move your fingers to the other side so that if your needle jumps outside the mold, you do not poke your fingers. Try to poke with even controlled strokes. You do not need to lift the needle very high, especially when working around the outside of your woolly heart.

 Once the wool has become nicely compacted inside the heart cookie cutter, gently pry your heart from the foam board, making sure it remains inside the heart cookie cutter.

 Flip the cookie cutter over so that you can now work on the underside of your heart, needle felting it just as before until it too becomes nicely compacted and smooth.

 Again, pay particular attention to the outside shape of your heart... the more you can needle felt it inside the cookie cutter, the better your wool will hold it's heart shape once we take it out of the heart mold.

When you feel you wool heart is well felted, gently slip it out from the cookie cutter mold. You might need to neaten up the edges by needle felting your heart some more.

 If you want to add a loop of ribbon to hang your heart, use a pair of small, sharp scissors to make a small hole in the top of your heart.

 Tie a knot in the ribbon to make a loop.

 Use the blunt edge of your felting needle to poke the ribbon knot into the hole. Then, needle felt the hole shut so that your ribbon is firmly felted into the wool.

Voila! You have just made a delightful felted heart to hang somewhere special in your home.

I hope you have enjoyed this needle felting project. You have enough wool in your kit to make three large hearts, one red, one pink and one white.

I have other needle felting kits available in my shop if you wish to try something new... felted pebbles for lovely home decor, felted toadstools and pumpkins, felted balls as well as kits of lovely colored wool for you to make whatever your heart desires. Please visit my shop
www.fairyfolk.etsy.com and look under the Kits section.


Happy felting and don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions about needle felting.
Blessings and magic,
Donni

Waldorf and Wonder

So many of us are initially drawn to Waldorf Education because of the beauty of the materials, the connection to the natural world, and the warm, coziness of the early childhood environment.  We become even more convinced that Waldorf is for us when we imagine our children enveloped in the nurturing environment created by the wool felt, silk playcloths, and wooden toys. 

And though these things are lovely, many of us don’t realize the greatest gifts of Waldorf Education until months or even years after our children have begun the journey.

A long time ago one of my mentors made a comment that has always stuck with me and has guided my teaching ever since. She said, “The one thing you cannot teach a child is how to have a new, original, creative thought that no one has ever had before.” What an idea! How can I really teach children to think for themselves? The moment I open my mouth (let alone teach my students a concept) I am filling them with pre-formed ideas that many people (myself included) have thought about endlessly. 

So I wonder, how important is it that my students have the ability to have new, creative ideas? Maybe they’ll make it just fine in the world without this ability. It doesn’t take long to wrestle with this question. The moment I think about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and other brilliant entrepreneurs I can see that the most successful people in our society are those who think in a creative and inspired way. And then, when I think about the condition of our world and the creativity that our current fast-paced world thrives upon I’m even further convinced that creative thinking is an essential skill.

But what can I do to help children have ideas that no one has ever had before? As I’ve thought about it I’ve realized that the best thing I can do to support the development of this skill is to create fertile ground, cultivate the seeds of thought and establish the form and rhythm that will allow the child’s own imagination to take over.

I have found that this is best done by engaging the child’s imagination with moments of wonder. With wonder, an opening comes that allows for the arrival of true inspiration.

What does that wonder look like? At different ages it takes on different forms.

In early childhood it comes around most often through experiences of the natural world. Very often those moments of wonder are so striking that we remember them even years later. I remember when I was a child watching the raindrops on the car window and having a clear moment of awe and wonder as I tried to determine how the drops chose to move around on the window.

In the grade school years those moments of wonder come about as children connect with the world through their feeling life. Younger children immerse themselves in stories and create the pictures in their imaginations. The story itself provides the opening.

Older children are inspired by observation that leads to thinking. I remember a physics demonstration that I did with my sixth graders. We completely blacked out the windows of our classroom and turned off the light. With a light on a dimmer switch I gradually let the light fill the room while the students observed the changes they saw. They were positively filled with wonder as they observed the shadows change to form and then become full of color. They wondered why that happened and the opening was created. Creating wonder for these older children is a huge passion of mine and it is the main topic of my blog.

As children get older it is thought that inspires this wonder more than anything else and it all comes about through our efforts to have our children experience the world in a completely open way, rather than through fixed concepts.

Wonder is truly the most essential component of the Waldorf curriculum and, in truth, it can arise in the most mundane experiences. The key to having children experience wonder is to fill their lives with rich and varied sensory experiences.

Needle Felted Playscape.

This Tutorial is also available on my blog, The Magic Onions (www.themagiconions.blogspot.com) on the Needle Felting Page.

To make the green base for these sweet felted landscapes all you'll is need:

* White wool
* a bamboo place mat (or bubble wrap)
* dish detergent
* two packets of green Kool-Aid (or about two tablespoons of green food coloring)

To begin, lay your bamboo place mat down on a flat surface.
Break off hand length pieces of your white wool, about an inch thick.

Place these lengths of white wool on the bamboo mat... two pieces this way... then two pieces on top of the first, the other way, at right angles.

Continue building two this way and two that way until you have placed about 4 layers on top of each other.

Now, roll the mat up with the wool inside.

The wool will all be rolled up inside the mat... don't worry if some is sticking out of the ends.

Pour a little detergent into the middle of the roll.

Pour some warm water into the middle of the roll.

You (or your child) can now roll the mat back and forth on a flat surface.

Soon it'll foam up wonderfully.

Use a little elbow grease, rolling it for about 5 to 10 minutes. Take turns with your child and when you think it is nicely felted inside the mat, let your child unroll it to reveal your wonderfully felted FLAT  piece of wool.

This is Teddy's favorite part of the process... massage the felted wool with your hands so that it felts just a little more. He loves this as the wool is warm and soapy and all wonderfully squishy.

Rinse out all of the soap from your lovely flat piece of felt.

Now for the dyeing process. We use Kool-Aid... it makes your white felt such a wonderful meadow green (food coloring should work just as well)

Empty two packets of green Kool-Aid into a rectangular baking dish.

Teddy loves this part too :-) The Kool-Aide makes volcanos!

Make sure you child is a safe distance away when you pour boiling water in to the Kool-Aid... enough water in which to submerge your wool.

Now, add your white wool felt. Use a spoon to make it sink under the green water.

Leave your wool in the green water and watch your child marvel as the wool sucks up all of the green and turns the water back to clear!

With cold water, rinse your green felt, roll it up in a towel and get your child to stomp on it to dry it. Pop it in the dryer for a few minutes for the final felting and Voila!

You have a beautiful green meadow base for your playscape.

Now, needle felt the trimmings onto the meadow and you and your child will delight in the enchanting playscape you have made together.

I have included a tutorial on how to needle felt a toadstool with this kit. This will give you the basics of needle felting 3D sculptures. Use the same techniques to make as many little goodies to adorn your playscape.Your imagination is the limit :-)

Please have a look at my blog, The Magic Onions, (www.themagiconions.blogspot.com). I have a page dedicated to needle felting with many wet and needle felting tutorials.

Happy creating,
Blessings and magic,
Donni