Felt Week! We love this needle felted bunny from Fit To Be Loved

We are celebrating Felt Week here at the big O. We'll be sharing felting projects and artists we adore all week long, with tutorials, inspirational photos and more. 

We are starting off with this incredibly cute bunny from Fit To Be Loved. This sweet guy has his own, super-detailed photo tutorial over on the Fit To Be Loved blog. I love the realistic eyes and the shading on the ears. I also like that he seems like he's so securely felted that you could actually give him to a small person as a gift. 

Be sure to checkout the full tutorial right here. 

As part of our Felt Week celebration, we'll have extra discounts on wool roving and tools in our shop. Check it out here or visit us in the real world at our store in Raleigh.

Happy felting!

Create sweet felted ornaments with a video tutorial

I love these felted ornaments created by Heather Powers. She's a talented designer and teacher, and I can't wait to sit down and watch her video tutorial for making these sweet ornaments. They would be an easy, fun craft to create for holiday gifts. I know lots of folks who would love one of these tied on their package. 

Check out Heather's video tutorial here.

Check out our felting supplies and wool roving here or stop in to the shop.

How to make a Color Pop Felt Ball Necklace

We'll be featuring this as a Dispatch project in just a few days. The free Miss-Match Ribbon Pack I mention in the video will be available with a coupon we'll send out. To get your coupon, be sure to subscribe to the Dispatch right now. 

New Felt Pin Kits are available

 

These sweet felt pins are a great crafty gift for a friend! Each kit makes 2 pins and the felting form and needle included in the kit can be reused many, many times. Click on the picture to see more details. 

New Tutorial - Spectrum Silk Necklace

Oops, this isn't actually that new. It's a project we sent out last week in a Dispatch but I forgot to post it here...

if you don't get the Dispatch you should sign up today.

You'll get 2 free projects every week in your email, what's not to love?

See the directions for the Spectrum Silk Necklace here.

Create a floral headband

Felted Egg

I love this sweet felted-egg tutorial over on Twig and Toadstool. Those crafty mamas always have really sweet family crafts that use quality materials to produce lovely objects.

My children are always in major production mode. Whatever craft they are currently working on WILL result in many, many multiples of the project. Beaded hair clips? My older daughter made 34 in a week. Tote bags complete with pocket but sized for an 18" doll? They made about 20. Resin magnets in bottle caps? We sent 50 out as gifts this past year. Teeny weeny books are the current obsession; we have a library of 1" books fit for a miniscule Alexandria. 

I'm a big stickler for giving the kiddos sharp scissors, good colored pencils, decent beads and nice fabric scraps. Why? Well, good ingredients give you a good product. Yeah, you know that with your adult crafts, but have you ever wondered why we stick the kids with the scissors that don't cut, creativity-zapping foam stickers, tacky plastic beads and garish ribbon? Is it because we want them to make us awful-looking objects?

We have a foam-sticker-free studio at our house. My girls have a giant basket of wool roving (cost $25 max and the # of projects is incredible!) We'll be raiding that basket to make some wool eggs for family and friends. Perhaps that can distract them from the itsy-bitsy books.

See the Twig and Toadstool project here.

Felt restock...

We've restocked our wool roving and felted balls. We received 11 giant boxes from Nepal on Friday and if you heard loud cheers and whoops of joy, that was us, opening box after box of bright, wooly beauty.

This sweet felted bird project by Andrea Sousa is a wonderful way to use wool roving, NOW with spring just around the corner a bird on a nest is a wonderful way to welcome the season.

A few other great ways to use felt and wool roving in the spring:

make a felted flower headband
felt a doll
make a felted soap

Santa's Laundry Felted Decoration Project Idea

This cute bit of decor is perfect for keeping your family busy after dinner on Thursday. What? no, really, why not hand them the wool, the directions and a few felting needles. You can go take a nap. Perfect.

Find the directions here, you may need to scroll down a bit!

Need some other ideas for the whole family after the big meal? Try this link.

Free project idea featuring Lori Flander's lovely toadstool bead

Click on the post title to see the tutorial. This double-strand necklace features a checked ribbon and just a bit of sparkle. Sweet!

Today, after a many-weeks delay in customs, our felt restock arrived. 

Yipee!

Sweet new felt bird how to...

This lovely how-to was created by Andrea Sousa just for us. Welcome spring with this sweet project-all the directions are right here for you at Ornamentea.com.

Felt ball rug how to...lots and lots of felt balls...

We have gotten a few inquiries from folks asking if we make these rugs for Anthropologie. We don't. We do have lots and lots of felt balls, and the rugs are made of thousands of felt balls, sewn to a cotton backing. The balls make for a comfortable and bouncy floor covering. I have to say, I have been tempted even though I have a comfortable and bouncy floor covering already in my home (a ten-year-old, 10x14" Tenango that still makes me swoon, thanks Crispina!)

Lo and behold, we received notice that a favorite customer of ours, the talented Claudia, is making a felt-ball rug of her own. She is making the rug in a mix of browns, blacks and whites that will be so lovely when finished. Claudia shared her process photos with us and I am sharing them with you.

Claudia begins by sewing her felt balls into long strands, mixing up the colors as she goes. I didn't ask her if she has a planned-out 'random' for the strands but I think it would work just fine to make them really, truly random.
After she has the individual strands sewn Claudia sews the strands to one-another. She has tested the rug out, too, although it's more of a runner at this point! She estimates that it will take 7000 felt balls to make the rug she wants. Since my floors are pretty covered I am thinking that some placemats would be really cool, or maybe chair pads? So, what are you making with your Ornamentea crafty ingredients? Send us a message and let us know...

Thank you, Claudia, for sharing your photos with us!

Edited on 7/19/12 to add:
This video shows how to sew them together...just a needle and thread, albeit a strong thread, will do the trick! These coasters are a great intro project, too!
The felt balls are available on our website (see the link above.)

Wonderful Wreath

This beautiful wreath using our felt ball assortments was recently featured on my new favorite Norwegian blog, Pickles. This blog has amazing photography, beautiful knitwear patterns (in Norwegian) and a clean, hip design aesthetic that makes me want to clean out my house and paint all my furniture white. Or various shades of white.

This wreath uses our felt balls stitched over a straw wreath form. I think I will make one over a styro wreath form I have lying around. Maybe I'll wrap it with roving first. These balls are stitched on but you could glue-gun them if you wanted.

Oh, the ceramic moose head sent my husband searching for a similar item to adorn our home. I told him we'd need to get all the furniture painted first.

Keep 'em busy! Family Crafts for Thanksgiving Day

Do you have family that you dearly love but would rather not spend too much time talking with? You know, the Aunty who likes to ask you if you have gained 12 or is it 15 pounds since she last saw you? That Uncle who always feels compelled to share the tale of the time when you were two years old and removed your pants during dinner and walked around with your napkin on your head? That second cousin who wants to get into some serious detail about her latest surgery DURING the meal? Of course you know these people, as a matter of fact, they are all having dinner with you this week.

After dinner is over you may want to hide under the coats on the guest bed, or veg in front of the t.v. and pretend to watch some football game while trying not to talk about politics. Don't. You rarely see these people. Torture them with forced crafting. If you were at my house and were one of my crazy relatives you would be forced to do something crafty. I do it every year and every year the reluctant "I can't do this!" family member ends up telling me that they had such a great time.

Here are this year's pics for sure-fire post-dinner crafts for Thanksgiving day:

Felty Pumpkins
This is a craft that almost anyone age 5+ can participate in. All you need are a few balls of wool roving, some felting needles and foam blocks. Lay out the roving, chat for a few minutes about safety with the needles (DON'T poke them in your brother, DO keep them on the table, DON'T poke them in your sister!) and let the family go at it. Choose roving in pumpkin shades or you can even branch out to apples or peaches if your family is super creative.

Get a free downloadable tutorial here and print it out for everyone.

Bonus: family members will channel aggression into the needle and won't remember to make snarky comments about your new gray hairs!

Stamped Name Pendants
Great for anyone old enough to spell, but the younger ones will enjoy just hitting the metal! You'll need a bench block, a set of letter punches, a hammer, a selection of metal discs (I like brass) and a metal hole punch. Spread everything out on the kitchen table or on the back porch and watch your roughest-toughest guys stamp out tags for their hunting dogs. I suggest having each person trace their disc and write out the name they want to punch before putting hammer to metal. That should help cut down on the folks who forget how to spell their own name.

Bonus: Even the most jaded teenager will put down the wii and come see what all the pounding is about. Take pictures!

Bottlecap Magnets
Powdered resins like Amazing Glaze are fun to use and non-toxic and who doesn't want a magnet with a picture of their own favorite Auntie? You can work ahead by printing out family photos, words or team logos and by drinking lots of beverages in capped bottles. Add some do-dads like buttons, glitter, tiny toys or rhinestones and your family members will keep making these until you beg them to stop. Oh, for the magnets you can hit your local hardware store. I love Seaboard Ace Hardware in Raleigh. Use E-6000 or 527 to glue the magnets to the bottle caps.

Bonus: You could make some for absent family members and mail them, nothing says 'we missed you' like commemorative handicrafts!

Get a free downloadable tutorial here and you'll have all the Amazing Glaze tips you could want.

So, have a happy Thanksgiving and remember to be thankful for the crazy, messy, crafty folks you are surrounded with. Send me pictures or let me know how your day went.

Free felt pumpkin project tutorial

This sweet project was designed by Andrea Sousa and you can get free directions right here.

Andrea teaches felting classes in Raleigh at Panopolie. See her upcoming classes here.

Book Review - Pretty Little Felts

One of the great things about my job is that I do get to meet a lot of amazing designers both in person and as telephone-pals. The author of this sweet book, Julie Collings, called me a few months ago to talk about our wool roving. We ended up having a l-o-n-g and chatty phone conversation that made me feel like I had made a friend. I was already familiar with Julie's book; I had seen it at a trade show before it was released and fell in love. The projects are so lovely and the mix of reuse and embellishment made me want to adorn so many things!

My favorite part of the entire book is the image of the dye chart the author made using overdyed wool from thrift store sweaters. I think I would put that dye chart in a frame and hang it on my wall! I also love the way useful items are made beautiful and may make a few of her needle cases for my crafty friends for the holidays this year...

Julie used a lot of Ornamentea.com wool roving and findings in her book, so you'll be able to find the supplies you need very easily! Find Pretty Little Felts here and at the stores.

Teacher Gifts!

Aggh! it's almost the end of the school year. In my annual effort to save the teachers of the world from the gifts I used to get when I was in the classroom* here are a few links to great and not-too-spendy projects you can make (or your kiddos can!) to say thanks to favorite teachers or other adults who make their days. Remember the attendance office lady who looked the other way on the fifteenth time your child was late? or the bus driver who actually has sing-alongs with the kids? That is going above and beyond.

And if your children are home schooled (lucky-ducks!) then you can make gifties for the public library librarians who find them seventy four books about squirrels or medieval castles, or the cool girl at the coffee shop who spends twenty minutes teaching your budding engineer about the fluid dynamics of the espresso maker.
Seriously, lets all make a gift for someone who makes our parenting lives just that much easier.

The ideas:
Betz White has a pattern for great nest and egg brooches or barrettes to make. Very sweet and a nice take on the ubiquitous bird theme...these make up fast, too!

How about a quick Memory Frame pendant? Don't put a picture of your child, no matter how cute they are. Instead take a piece of their artwork and reduce it on a color copier to the appropriate size. That lopsided sheep in a boat will suddenly look very au courant when sealed behind glass and hung from a silk cord. Add a note on the back (also reduced!) that says thanks for being my teacher and you have the gift that will get worn AND shown off.

And finally, what about a beaded lanyard? If your child's teacher has to wear one of these, why not make it pretty? You can string up beads in the teacher's favorite color, or the school colors, and attach a badge clip hook to the end. This is a gift that will get used!

I am going to go raid my studio this weekend and see what we can come up with...the teachers and librarians in our lives are pretty great.

*Stuffed bears and University of Oklahoma coffee mugs. I was in Texas. Parents asked where I went to school and I said "OSU" so they bought me Oklahoma gear. Problem is, I am from Ohio, so "OSU" means Ohio State University!

Ways to use wool roving...unexpected

Felt is really amazing. You can make shoes, houses, tissue box covers and, yes, even ipod speakers that look like a tiny doll.

I am not kidding.

Here is the original site with the speakers for sale for 3,780 yen. That's about $38 USD of warm tunes.

My husband pointed out that the sweet dolly speaker is shown with a shuffle...so it's really, really tiny. I don't have a shuffle as I would lose it in a hot minute. The dolly might make it last two minutes. Maybe.

(thanks to the blog I saw this on...I can't find you now, too much late night blogging with too much wine and facebook mixed in, please email me and let me know who you are!)

(and since you can't see the original blogger who told me about the felt speakers, visit Jenna's blog, it's about 'arts and craps')

Ornament Thursday!

Create quick and simple ornaments for all your friends using wool roving and a needle felting tool. These teeny Santa Suit ornaments would be cute on some stripey Baker's Twine draped on your tree. The simple tree-shaped ornaments shown below are so easy, just felt a tree-ish triangle of wool and add on some teeny wool 'ornaments' in festive colors. We did the Tree Ornament at Panopolie on Tuesday and we'll re-run it Friday morning at Breakfast and Beads.







You don't have to make trees, try hearts, gingerbread men, even dinosaurs!
If you want a bit of help in shaping your ornament try using a metal cookie cutter to hold the roving in place. Needle felt inside the cutter with a single needle to get the wool in shape and then remove the ornament to finish with a multi-needle tool.

For other great Ornament Thursday posts visit the Ornament Thursday blog.