Daiso put out these new craft kits recently, which is awesome for learning new technique without investing a lot in material. For $1.50 I get to learn how to felt - can't really beat that :)
I think they may have had a few different designs, but I choose this cute pink bear.
The kit came with felt, a needle, 4 eyeballs and a keychain finding.
But the best part? The instructions were in both Japanese AND English! YAY.
The instructions were really clear too, so nice. The only things I needed to supply was a mat (I used a foam dish drying pad, but any type of foamy soft surface would work), a bit of craft glue for the eyes, and an "awl" to dig eye holes. I didn't have an awl, so I used a pointy metal stick used for digging crab meat out of shells :P Kinda awlish. A strong skewer or maybe a big toothpick might work too?
Anyway, felting is...a lot simplier than I thought it would be. You literally just stab the felt over and over again with the felting needle. That's really all (at least in this simple kit).
The more you stab the felt, the smaller and harder it gets. How does this work? There are tiny grooves in the felting needle, like little fish hooks that grab and interlock the felt together.
So just stab and stab and stab and stab again until the felt gets the shape you intend.
To connect pieces together, you just stab one into the other. So much stabbing.
This took me three evenings of stabbing in front of the television. I stabbed myself a good handful of times, once enough to draw blood - so a little attention to
where you're stabbing is..recommended >.>"
He's kinda cute, yeah? Well - then I glued in the eyes..
EHH. Looks pretty bug-eyed. :/
The back is cute though. Fwuffy tail!
In comparison:
Yeah. SO OFF. I obviously should have looked at the final image more while shaping my felt. His head should be much bigger, and limbs much shorter. Oh well. I'll send it to my sister at camp and see what she thinks. Haha!
In a nutshell, felting is not as difficult as I thought it'd be, and it's also more time-consuming than I thought it'd be. I know they sell different sized felting needles, so perhaps if you started with a larger needle and moved to a finer size as you go, it might speed the process a bit?
Any pro tips from those who've felted before?
LOLOLOL: "This took me three evenings of stabbing in front of the television."
ReplyDeleteSuper cute!! My sister just started needle-felting recently, and I got her a really cute sushi needle felting kit on Etsy for her birthday. =) I also got her this needle that's actually like 3 or 5 needles in one, for bigger surfaces, not sure if that would have cut down your 3 stabby evenings to just 1. =) I tried it once, and was terrible at it. But she made a couple of really cute teeny animals!!
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