Vegan needle felting 2

Hi it's been a long time since I posted. And I've been busy needle felting. Not with bamboo fibres which make hard mean 3D items but with a new fibre called Aclaine from Japan. A company called Hamanaka is producing the 100% acrylics fibre for felting which means it is vegan!!!
http://hamanaka-jp-crafts.com/items/feltwool/aclaine.html

I get mine from an etsy shop called SweetPeaDolls, they are super helpful, they are what's called Embassadors for Aclaine fibre which basically means they sell it in England.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/SweetPeaDolls?ref=l2-shop-header-avatar
It comes in a wide range of colours, mainly pretty pastels and fresh bright colours. It felts really well to itself and makes delightfully spongy soft items. It is not so good for thin detail such as stems as the fibres seem short and it retains a lot of air not unlike wadding. I am currently experimenting with it to see what it can do and have made a few flowers, a hamster and some bird brooches.

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The roses were made by creating a sheet of felt first by laying it over a sponge and needling it with the clover 5 needle tool, when doing this it is important to lift the felt frequently so it doesn't stick to the foam. This sheet was then cut into two base pieces per flower and a wavy long strip which I coiled and attached from the middle outwards. This technique came from a lovely new book called Felting fabulous flowers which I got from Amazon. The pansys were also from this book.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1909397393/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Hand sewn jewel

This is the hand sewn jewel using sewn on gems and surrounded by beads sewn on sideways after realising they look so much more effective that way round. I have cut it off the enbroidey hoop and left tabs which i turned under and sewed together as the back. Using the same long thread i sewed the jewel onto the top of one of my shrines.

i think it looks really effective!

Felt shrine with hand sewn jewel and other embellishments.

Embellishments

Inspired by this charity shop find (see below) I thought I would try my hand at making my own embellishments. I have a small stash of beads etc so wil be good to use some of them up.

I first stuck some plastic gems onto felt with my glue gun, this created a problem as it was hard to sew close up where the glue had oozed out. 

This picture shows how messy the glue gets!!! I tried to trim off as much as I could without cutting the felt and sewed beads around the central gem going around twice with the thread to secure. I didn't take photos as I went so this is the final result.

Coin for sizing purposes. Now to decide how I will attach the decoration to the shrine? Glue (messy!) or cut out a neat circle and blanket stitch around. It may be too big for my purple shrine that I am making (?)

Also busy cutting out lots of circles in different colours to make roses.

Felt flowers

Hi, it's been a long time since I've posted and I am starting as I mean to go on. I am currently making love shrines out of paper mache and felt. 

This post is how I made flowers for my new shrine following a You tube video by The Flower Art

https://youtu.be/XKQD0i6ZjO4

This was the most effective way of making realistic roses that I could find after a brief search. It's lots of repeatative easy steps.

1 cut out circles, the video advises 4.5cm and 8 per flower but I neede a smaller flower so cut out 6 circles 3cm in diameter. These are then cut in half.

2. Sew the circles together overlapping each other halfway.

3. Gather the petals by pulling on the thread.

4. This results in a spiral that you roll from one end to the other like a Swiss roll and gluing as you go. I couldn't take a pcture of this as it takes two hands and can get messy!!!

Hey presto ...lovely little They have fairly flat bottoms which are perfect for gluing onto shrines.