Needle felted Piranha Plant and other gifts

Hello! It's time to show you some more of the Christmas gifts I made! I have a couple more to go, but they haven't been gifted yet (I believe in a very extended holiday period) so I'll show you those next time ^___^

For Scott I made this needle-felted Piranha Plant, of Super Mario fame. To make this, I used a very similar technique from when I made Oscar the Grouch. I used my scalpel to cut out a wedge from a large styrofoam ball which was to become the ... head (???) of the plant and then covered the ball in sheets of red felt. I needed felted the felt together where it overlapped to create a tight casing of felt around the ball. 

 

I cut out small triangles of white felt and used my needle tool to attach them to the mouth area. I also used my needle tool to ensure the bottom of the mouth was more sharply defined.

 

I rolled wool fibre into loose sausage shapes and felted them onto the ball to become the lips. I didn't felt the tops of the lips much, but was sure to felt the edges to create a more rounded shape.

 

To create the spots, I rolled fibre into loose balls and then felted them on. The balls are slightly 3D because I really wanted them to have solid colour so they are made up of a few layers of fibre each.

 

For the stem I used regular sheets of felt. I cut out a long strip and wound it around a wooden chopstick, needle felting where the sheet overlapped itself. I used a scalpel to cut a hole in the bottom of the head of the plant and inserted the stem. I needle felted where the stem met the head so that the felt wouldn't come loose and expose the chopstick.

The leaves were cut from the same sheet of green felt and needle felted only at the bases onto the stem. This gives them a nice curved shape, which I think helps make them look more leafy.

Once the plant was done, I hot glued the bottom of the stem into a paper mache flower pot that I had painted green. Then I stuffed the pot with variegated green chunky wool; this stabilised the plant so it doesn't wobble around but it's also very light. Scott really liked it and my parents thought that I had brought it. Two lovely compliments for any crafter! ^___^

My dad, Kevin, is pretty difficult to craft for since he mostly likes trees (I really should just stick to buying him a new tree every year). However, he does also like camping and happened to mention that soap on a rope would be useful for washing in the desert.

I used the instructions in "A Little Bit Crafty" by Frankie Magazine for these but they didn't turn out as well as I had hoped; they are a little bit bumpy and a little bit cracked.

 

If I were to make them again, I would ensure that my soap was in much smaller pieces before attempting to shape them into balls. I think the chunky flakes that I started off with didn't assist with the making of smooth soaps.

 

I braided cotton string to use as the ropes, which worked out well because all other actual ropes that I had turned out to be way too big. So, another suggestion: either make bigger soaps, or buy smaller ropes! 

 

For my Nana Alma and my mum, Anne, I made some lavender sachets using vintage look (but not actual vintage) handkerchiefs, ribbon, and lavender (bet you guessed that last bit, huh).

 

To make these, I cut the handkerchiefs in half, folded them in half again, and then sewed around three of the edges. You could hand sew these, but I used a sewing machine because it is so much faster (and I'm pretty lazy!).

 

Then I filled them with lavender and tied them closed with a length of ribbon. Easy peasy!

I also made these ink smudging tools for Anne; they are apparently used in scrap booking. I started off with two lengths of pine, one wide and flat and the other not so wide and not so flat, which I glued together.

I used Kevin's bench press to cut them into smaller segments and then stained them with wood varnish. I originally tried to use a saw and failed miserably. Power tools, people! They rock. I used stick on velcro dots cut in half to attach lengths of felt on and around each segment. They were a little time consuming, but once I had a little production line going it wasn't too bad.

My next post won't be until next year ... which starts in one day! OMG! It's time to start thinking about a whole 'nother years worth of crafts to create ... but, until then, Happy New Year and thanks for sticking with this little blog of mine for another 12 months. I hope we can do it all again next year!

Catch you on the flip side!

- Lisa xx

Needle-felted Oscar the Grouch

Hello! A while ago on Instagram I mentioned that Scott and I have been married now for four years! Omg, right? The traditional gifts for the fourth anniversary include electricial appliances, fruit, flowers, and linen; nothing that really spoke to me.

And then I found this mug at Typo. First of all, it's adorable. Secondly, it reminded me of Scott's favourite Muppet.

 

Oscar the Grouch! Yay! ^___^

He was so much fun to make, and relatively easy too! He is 25cm tall (while in the mug) and his head is 33cm in circumference; it gives him a more cartoonish look to have a big head I think! ^___^

To make him I used one styrofoam ball, one styrofoam cone, felt in green, black, white, red, and brown, fiber in green and brown, one pipecleaner, a needle felting tool, scissors, a hot glue gun, a scalpel, and a plastic spoon.

The first thing I did was to use the scalpel to cut the mouth shape out of the styrofoam ball and to cut the bottom and top off the styrofoam cone so that the base was small enough to fit into the mug and the top was flat to rest the head on.

I did the head first, and made quite a few mistakes along the way. Primarily, I used hot glue to attach green felt to the ball as a base for the fiber. Don't do this! If I had have actually thought this through, I would have realised that hot glue sets hard enough to break needles! >___< Because I did that, I had to use hot glue to attach everything on the head. It still looks ok, but I would have liked to have needle felted his facial features and the hot glue meant I couldn't. Instead, I just cut everything out from felt and glued it onto the head. His monobrow is fiber glued to a piece of felt, as I thought by itself it would be slightly patchy. I'm sure that wouldn't have been a problem if I could have needle felted it though.

However, I'd learnt my lesson when it came to the body and arms! You can not needle felt fiber directly onto styrofoam, so I still needed a felt base. I wrapped felt around the cone and needle felted the fabric that overlapped. It's not actually attached to the styrofoam in any way, just tightly wrapped and felted around it. Then I needle felted on the fiber. Although local big box craft store had labelled this fiber as "for needle felting", I think it might actually be for wet felting. It doesn't have the same kind of fine consistancy that my other fibers have but, in this instance, it wasn't a problem. If you wanted to make something look really neat you'd be having trouble, but I thought it was good for Oscar to look a bit messy ^___^

As for the arms, I cut out long strips of felt, needle felted the fiber onto them, and then felted them closed with a small section of pipecleaner inside to make them slightly poseable. If you do this, keep in mind that the wire in the pipecleaner could break your needles, so ensure you only felt around it. I made sure the pipecleaners were shorter than the arms so that I could felt the tops of the arms to the body.

 

Lastly, I tried to use hot glue to attach the head to the body but it was much too wobbly, and I thought the weight of the head would pull off the fibers from the body. I cut the handle off a plastic spoon and, after using my scalpel to cut through the fiber and felt, inserted it into both the head and the body. It worked really well - that head isn't going anywhere! ~___^

And that's that! ^___^ I'm pleased with how he turned out, but now I want to give proper needle felting a go! Have you done any needle felting? What did you make? I think I better start with something easy, so I'd love your suggestions! ^___^

- Lisa xx