How to Create Felted Easter Eggs

Easter will be here before we know it and these easy to make felted Easter Eggs would be perfect to display for the coming holiday.

Have you ever tried felting?

It is surprisingly easy to do, requires very few supplies and the creations are only limitted by your imagination! A few years ago I created several felt pumpkins for my entryway and that post is still getting pinned. I just love how they turned out. I display them every year.

I have always wanted to start a collection of Easter Eggs to display every year and I have a few half-finished knit eggs in my WIP pile. This year though, I wanted to take a stab (pardon the pun!) at making a few felt Easter Eggs. Luckily they take less time to knit. The perfect project for a rainy day.

First you will need a few supplies:

• Plain roving wool
• colored roving wool
• felting needle (barbed)
• thick foam for shaping

I like to buy a large bag of plain white wool for making the base of my shapes. It usually costs less than buying all dyed or colored wool. I can add a layer of colored wool over the top. But, feel free to use the wool you can find, or have on hand.

I buy smaller balls of colored wool, depending on the project. I found these primary colored roving wool on Amazon. You can also find a variety of sellers on Etsy.

Then you need to get yourself a felting needle.

Felting needles can be a little intimidating! They are very long, tapered and sharp.

If you look closely at the tip you can see the little barbs. This helps to pull wool into the center as it is jabbed. I have gone through several different needles and simple is best for me. Unfortunately I have broken the tips off of more expensive needles.

Used properly, they are quite safe. Even my kids enjoy felting. Just make sure your needle never gets too close to your hand during shaping.

Begin with a big handful of roving wool. It will compact down a lot as you shape it. For one egg, I used a large handful of wool. The nice thing about felting is you can always add or take away wool until you achieve the size and shape you want.

I press the wool together with one hand and gently jab with the other. I will fold and roll the wool into the desired shape as I make controlled jabs until the object starts to shape up.

Once I had the basic egg shape, I could jab and turn the egg to get a more compact and smooth shape.

To decorate the white eggs, I took small amounts of colored wool and layed them over the egg. Then slowly and deliberately jabbed them in place.

Use the needle to pull any loose fibers into place, or stretch them with the needle tip to fill an area. If you don't like the placement, just pull the colored fibers off the egg. It is that easy.

For my multi-colored banded egg, I layered on multi-colored roving yarn and then layered it with a little more white, then another layer of colored wool till I achieved the desired pattern.

On another egg, I put created red flowers and green leaves.

In the future I would love to try stencils to achieve patterns around the eggs. Experiment and let me know what works for you. If you make your own felt Easter Eggs, leave a link below, I would love to come check them out.

For more craft ideas, visit a few of my favorite bloggers:

How to Make Your Own Night Cream for Beautiful Skin by The Socialite's Closet

St. Patrick's Day Leprechaun Trap by TigerStrypes Blog

Zoey's Treasure by Immutable Ramblings

Easter Spring Wall Decor by B is 4

Homemade Citrus Enzyme Cleaner by Girly Creation

DIY Felt Hair Bows

It's Thursday and that means it is time for a simple and fun craft. It has taken me a while to recover from all the excitement and craziness of the holidays, and I am still working to shake a sinus infection, but I really am itching to share some fun crafts. This is one perfect for any little girls in your life.

For Christmas, Santa brought my 5-year old daughter a big girl vanity set and I am busy working on getting her organized and personalizing everything for her. Check back on Monday for a Personalized Hair Bow organizer I will be sharing for the January Silhouette Challenge.

But all that new space means I needed to make more hair accessories!

Nothing beats a simple solid hair bow to have in the stash. My daughter has lots of patterned ribbon bows, but no big felt ones. This project took me about 20 minutes total, and that was with taking photos!

Grab your ruler, scissors, felt, alligator clip, and hot glue gun. If you want, I even have a felt bow template you can print off if you want.

Cut out your three pieces of felt and heat up the glue gun.

Cut triangles into your tail piece. You can either fold for an even triangle, or use the template to help.

Grab the largest piece and pinch in the middle. Then fold the edges to the back. With your glue gun, put a dot in the middle fold and hold till it sets. Then flip the bow over and glue down each of those folds.

Put a dot of glue underneath to add on the tail.

Then add a drop of glue under the bow and add the knot piece. Wrap it around the front and trim this piece if necessary. It should wrap around and be glued down to the end.

Put a little glue on the alligator clip and slip it underneath the knot piece in the back.

Now, wasn't that easy? Why not make one in every color?

When buying supplies, know that not all felt is created equal. The better quality wool felt is often thicker and will keep from pilling longer. the red bow I created was out of a higher quality wool. The others were cute, too and made out of inexpensive felt from Michael's.

An InLinkz Link-up

Felt Crafts - Simple Santa Ornament

Yes, I have already started to think about Christmas...  Each year I hope to tackle a number of Christmas crafts and projects and this year I wanted to start out with a fast ornament project. We started the tradition of handmade Holidays when my son was 1. I sadly parted with my glass ornaments and crystal icicles as soon as it become obvious the baby was going to make a mess of them.

Because I still wanted a tree, I decided to go simple and handmade. A few years ago the kids and I created cinnamon ornaments and paper chains to decorate our tree. It was a huge hit and a tradition was born.

My breakables are still safely tucked away for a future Christmas, but for now I only use our handmade or natural decorations. This year I wanted to create some fun felt ornaments for the tree. With another toddler in the house I want everything to be safe for him.

I started by ordering a variety of wool felt from Etsy. Yes, you can find inexpensive acrylic felt at the craft store, but the wool felt is more durable, thicker and easy to cut. I am a huge fan.

Just a heads up, I am participating in a Handmade Holiday roundup next week and will have a more elaborate felt ornament  to share then. I am so excited for the unveil.

To get started, grab your supplies and print off the Santa template.

I suggest to trace the template with Freezer Paper that can be ironed right onto the wool. This makes cutting out exact shapes so much easier.

You Will Need:

• wool felt in red, white, pink and flesh tone/peach
• Freezer paper
• felt glue
• pink marker
• permanent black marker
• embroidery floss
• embroidery needle
• batting or cotton
• 5" of ribbon
• sequins, white or opal
• seed beads, white or clear

Cut  out all the pieces using your template.

I used a pink marker to create rosey cheeks for Santa, then used a little felt glue to attach the face to the back of the beard.

I embellished the mustache and tassel of Santa's hat with some sequins and seed beads before stitching the mustache to the front beard pieces. Then I stitched around the bottom of the beard leaving the top open for a little bit of batting.

I wanted to give his beard a little dimension.

Once filled, I stitched down the top of the beard and glued on the nose.

Use a marker to fill in eyes and any other detail on the face.

Then I glued and sewed the ribbon hook to the bottom piece of the hat. With the blanket stitch I went around the top of the hat and added the tassle,

Then I used the two white brim pieces to sandwich together the hat and attach it to Santa's head. Simply stitch around the brim to hold it all together.

Then Santa is ready to adorn your tree. I hope this inspires you to whip up some one-of-a-kind felt ornaments for your own tree this year.

An InLinkz Link-up

Fall Decorating & Crafting - Felt Pumpkins

I am in the mood for Fall. Halloween is on my mind and the turning of the leave and ripening of pumpkins on the brain. One of my favorite activities on chillier nights is to craft. This year's project has been felting and so far I love it! I can make one of these pumpkins during an hour long episode of TV and I have plans to fill my apothecary jars in the entryway and make a center piece on the table using these easy felt pumpkins.

I love the texture of wool already from knitting and a failed attempt at spinning and the drop needle, (...and by failed I mean I will probably take it up again in a few years) so this was a big stretch. I already had some wool laying around.

After a few late nights on Etsy I saw some kits for creating your own felt pumpkins. They came with needles, a mat and some wool to get started. These are serious needles, by the way. With little barbs at the end, as you stab the felt it pulls some fibers into the center of the bundle causing it to start felting.

So armed with the tools, I started out. Now, you can use either all orange wool, or use a natural color and cover it with less of the orange dyed wool. Well, unless you have ever met an orange sheep. I would love their number, please.

I wrapped the natural wool in a ball and started stabbing. I can't tell you how good this feels for releasing stress.

Here is my finished ball. This only took 10 minutes of stabbing. I turned it as I went and the ball begins to take shape. I stabbed the top and bottom more to give it a flatter top and bottom. Since pumpkins come in all shapes and sizes, you really can't go wrong with this craft.

Then I covered my ball with a little orange wool. Keeping poking the needle in and out to secure it in place. Use little bit of excess wool to cover any thin or bare spots. I don't mind a little brown showing through, but that is my personal preference. I think it looks more natural.

After a while the pumpkin gets harder and harder to push the needle into. Then I added the lines. Just keep stabbing the same line over and over till you get the desired indentation.

Then with just a little bit of brown I created a long stem. Stab, fold and shape as desired.

I trimmed mine to the desired length and then attached it to my pumpkin. Stab and pull the fibers on the end to attack where you want. I tried to pull mine to cover the entire center.

There you have it! My little felted pumpkin. I plan on also adding a few white and green pumpkins to my collection as well.

An InLinkz Link-up