Tag Archives: felt

finished pinecones

Christmas Advent 2015 – Day 11 Chenille Pinecones

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Day 11! Today I made some pine cones out of chenille pipe cleaners. Specifically, I made them out of chenille bump stems in a lovely light brown color.

Materials:

  • Chenille bump stems (brown)
  • Large wooden beads
  • Felt (brown)
  • Scissors
  • Tacky Glue
  • Superglue

individual layers of pine cone scales

First, I made leaflets with the chenille stems as shown above to create layers of pine cone scales. Next, I glued a bead on the underside of one layer and glued another layer to the bead, as show below, using tacky glue. This can take a little bit of time as you want to let the tacky glue dry really well before you add another layer of leaflets.

how I glued the layers together with a wooden bead

I was working on three at once, so I kept them all in a neat pile with their corresponding beads.

layers glued together and beads I used

I will say that the wooden beads in the middle of the picture worked the best. Made a nice sturdy and pretty pine cone.

felt pieces cut and pasted for top layer of scales

Then, I cut individual scales from the felt to make the tops of the pine cones. I glued these with the tacky glue into sets of three. I put 6-7 of these trios on each pine cone. I put  I also cut 1/4″ x 3/4″ strips of felt in the same color and glued them into rolls to make the stems of the pine cones.

finished pine cones stacked on top of each other

You can see above where I glued the stems to the top of the pine cones and then added the felt leaflets around the stem.

Once everything had dried, I them touched up all the connecting points with super glue to make sure that everything would stay together and form a strong bond. At this point, you could easily add a tree hook to the top and hang them from the tree. That would look really nice. I have another purpose for these that you will see in about a week.

Happy Crafting!

Kristin

Felt Christmas Tree ornament

Ornament Advent: Day 7 Felt Tree and Wreath

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Today’s ornament was a massive lesson in frustration. Or rather, the ornament that you don’t see was. My original idea for an ornament failed spectacularly. My craft table is covered with parts, bits, and pieces. Around 10:00pm I realized that it was never going to work. Then began the frantic search. I dug through all of my supplies in the hope for a lightning strike. I didn’t get one until I was texting my sister that I was ready to give up. Right after I hit send, it hit me.

Felt Christmas Tree ornament

I love felt and I had a lot of fun last year with the pins and sequins ornament I made, so why not combine the two. The base of this ornament is a ball I made for temari. Temari is a Japanese art form that I played with a few years ago and kept all my supplies (go figure). You make the ball by taking a very large handful of stuffing and wrapping it with thread (one way to make the ball anyway). A lot of thread. You keep winding the thread around and around and around the stuffing until you get a round ball. This particular ball was my attempt to create a flattened ball to showcase a design on the front and back. I never did get around to completing the temari, but it gave me an excellent form to create my Christmas ornament.

Felt wreath side of the ornament

Next, I cut strips of felt around 1/2″ to 3/4″ wide and started cutting these strips into triangle pieces. Then I took my piles of pins and sequins and pinned the triangles to the ball to make the images of the wreath and tree. I used some fuzzy white thread to make a sort of frame to separate the two images by sewing it around and around the ball. I made a quick hook and voila! I was finished.

Side view of Christmas ornament
Here you can see the fuzzy white thread.

I really like the effect of the multiple colors of green for the Christmas tree and the stars in the wreath really make it pop. You could use anything for the form of the ornament, Styrofoam would be very easy. I imagine a Santa Claus/reindeer ornament would be very cute. Anyone want to try it? Send us your picture and we will post it! I would love to see someone else’s version.

Christmas tree side of ornament

Just goes to show that necessity really is the mother of invention.

Happy Crafting!

Kristin

Fun with Felt: The Farm – Preliminary Drawings

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One of my favorite websites to peruse is craftgawker. It is an excellent site to get ideas for art and crafting. A few weeks ago, there were these wonderful felt dolls. I absolutely loved them and decided that I would make some for my niece (this will be a whole other post so stay tuned, and man did I have fun with this whole project). This led me to what I would make for my nephew. He is the youngest and I decided that I would make a felt farm!

First, I needed some animal shapes. I couldn’t find anything online that I liked. Everything was either too simple or not cartoony enough. I ended up on Google Images looking at photos of real animals and drew my own.

Photo of preliminary animal drawings.

This was so much fun and I actually had to stop myself from making more. If these are a success as a toy, I have lots of additions to make (goats, baby animals, ducks, mice, birds, and so much more).

Close-up of cat and chicken drawings.

There is also going to be a barn, tractor, trees, some fencing, bales of hay and water troughs (and again, more farm equipment if these are a kid approved toy, one of the other Crafty Sisters suggested a wind mill, wouldn’t that just be awesome?).

Photo of preliminary drawings of pig and sheep.

I have this really silly tendency to giggle (sort of a cross between a giggle and a mad cackle) when I am particularly happy about a project that I am working on, and this was practically a non-stop giggle project. I think I kept Lynne really entertained during our Google Chats while I made them. I really have had so much fun creating these that I need some more kids to make them for.

Photo of preliminary drawings of horse.

And here is the first set of animals that I made in felt. The chickens are dangerous, let me tell you. I made the white one at the top first, and from there, they just got addicting and I just kept giggling and they just kept multiplying. The next thing I knew, there were ten chickens. So, there is a good sized flock of chickens to go with my felt farm now.

Photo of flock of felt chickens.
The flock just kept growing.

Please don’t worry. There will be detailed instructions, photographs and a printable PDF of the animals in my next post about the felt farm so you can make your own. This is, in a sense, a teaser trailer to the rest of the project just to show some of what I have been working on lately.

Photo of felt chicken up close.

Those chickens really are just so adorable, but wait until you see the felt sheep.

And the felt cat.

And the felt cow.

Okay, like I said, the whole felt farm is just way too cute. Keep an eye out for a giggling madwoman the next time you are in Michael’s. It might just be me.

Happy crafting,

Kristin

Christmas Ornament Countdown: Steam Punk Felt Bird

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Christmas Ornament Countdown
Steam punk felt bird Christmas ornament.

Cheri: This little bird is all decked out in his Christmas Regalia. He is just not satisfied with being just a bird, he felt the need to dress for the occasion. And when I say dress for the occasion, he really did. He has a lovely crown, quite nice decoration on his tail feathers and he is wearing some very nice wing bracelets.

The body of this little bird is felt that has been sewn together and stuffed. I then took several pieces of different colored wire and used it in place of feathers. He is a little bit of a steam punk bird with all his attire. I hope you like him as much as I do.

Christmas Ornament Countdown
Felt bird.

Merry Christmas from Crafty Sister Cheri.

Christmas Ornament Countdown
All dressed up in steam punk.