Felt Acorns

I have been seeing these around the web lately and wanted to try some myself. 

I had a wee bit of a learning curve but finally figured it out!

I bought my wool roving in little bags from Hobby Lobby.  The bags are really tiny so I thought I would need alot of them since I had never done this before.  Wrong!!  Just one color from the bag makes a huge amount of felt balls to use for making acorns.  I way over bought!

First set up a small bowl with dish soap and HOT water.  Then tear off a small section of the wool.

Dip the wool into the hot water, remove and start gently rolling it into a ball in the palm of your hands.  Drop it into the water again and pull out and continue to roll it between your palms.  The wool will slowly start to form a tight ball and you can apply a little more pressure once it has formed up.  Just roll and roll it until you have a nice tight ball.

NOTE:  This is NOT the size you need for acorns!  This was my first try and wayyy over judged the size of wool I needed.

Make sure you keep the water HOT while you are rolling the wool.  (Obviously don't scald yourself!)

No matter how much I rolled the wool I always had a  crack.  To easily fix this I would just take a few more fibers, dunk in the water, place over the crack and continue rolling in my palms.

If you think your acorn might be too small for the cap, just grab a few more fibers and dunk them in the water and wrap around your ball.  Then dunk the whole ball in water and continue rolling until you are happy with the size.

Once I had a nice tight wool ball I would then place it under running water, while still rolling it between my palms to get  rid of some of the dish soap.  Very gently squeeze some water from the wool ball and then place on a towel to dry completely.  Dry at least 24 hours.

I gathered some acorns and removed the tops.  I wanted a pop of color so I spray painted the tops a Bahama Blue.

Once everything is dry, use a glue gun to attach the wool ball to the acorn top.

There are different ways to felt with wool but this system worked best for me.

Next year I might use turquoise wool roving and keep the acorn tops natural.  I'm also going to try  red wool roving and natural tops for Christmas time!

These would look great around napkins,  collected in a bowl or maybe attach some fine thread and hang from something!

Linked with Skip to my Lou, Made by You Monday.

Felt Xmas Ornaments

I think I could decorate an entire tree with just my wool felt ornaments I have been making the past few years.  I love finding great patterns for felt ornaments.

Here are some of my favorites from a great pattern set from the talented Alicia from  Posie Gets Cozy. 

 

 

I love making these for my tree or giving out as gifts.  Always nice to give a little homemade gift to someone!

 

She sells these patterns in her shop.  5 different themes to pick from, and you get 3 different ornaments per set.

 

To get the fine details onto the felt, I always use tissue paper.  I trace the design onto tissue paper, secure to my felt and just stitch thru the tissue paper.  Once I'm done stitching, I carefully rip away the tissue.

 

 

 

I love this polar bear.  He even has a spark-ely bum!  She gives instructions on how to crochet a little scarf for him, but above my skill level.  So my bear just gets a wool felt scarf!

 

 

 

Just love this coat!  The coat even has details on the back.

 



 

 

The marshmallow even has it's own stuffing.

I need to make the ice skate next.  Click on over and check out all her super detailed patterns.

Each pattern set is $7. and can be found here.

Felt Pumpkin Pie

Oh how I love pumpkin pie!
I just whipped up a felt slice of pumpkin pie with a dollop of whipped cream on top!
Click on over to Sew Mama Sew for the pdf pattern and instructions on how to make your own slice!
I like to decorate my dessert table with a couple slices.

Now I need to go make the real thing!  Love this time of year.

Onesie Applique

Here is an easy peasy project.  I have more baby showers this week.  So I thought this idea would be cute.  I appliqued the state of the baby's birth onto a onesie.  I also ironed on a star to represent the birth city.

I cut out the state I wanted from a U.S. road map.  Cut a piece of fabric a little larger than the state.

Iron on a piece of Heat n Bond to the back side of the fabric.
I put my state face down on the heat bond and traced around with a pencil.

Cut out state with fabric scissors, peel off heat n bond backing paper and iron on to a onesie.

Add a star for the city if you desire the same way you did the state.

Easy peasy!  A no-sew baby shower gift!

Have a great day!

Simple Skirt

My new favorite thing to make K now.

Dana from MADE has got a great tutorial on this super simple skirt.  I love the added details with this skirt to truly make it look professional.

You can add an extra layer, add bias tape or just leave the hem plain.  She also had a great tutorial on how to make your own seam binding tape.

 

 

I used 1 yard for the pink one and 1 1/4 yards for the double layer skirt. 

So far I have made 7 of them! 

Head on over to MADE and see how easy-peasy this skirt is to make.  No pattern necessary!

Board & Batten Wall

FINALLY.  Done.  This project had so many starts and stalls I can't even find a true "before" photo!
So glad to finally be done with this one wall.

I LOVE board and batten, but it sure is time consuming when finishing up the entire project.  Seems like it takes forever the fill in a ton of nail holes, sand, caulk and paint every nook and cranny.  This sucker has at least 3-4 coats of satin white paint.

Originally I put up the boards around the entire room.  I had used smaller boards because I had seen it done here and I really liked the overall look.  So I nailed up the boards and lived with it for awhile. 

1st design:

Did not love it at all for the entire room.

Down came the boards, out came the primer and I started from scratch again.

Finally I decided to just do a feature wall of board and batten.

I used a pencil and drew the placement of the boards onto the wall to see if I would like the new design better.

I really like how it's now just featured on one wall and it makes a huge impact when entering the room. 

I decided to change the paint color as well. Now I just have to finish sanding up the other 3 walls and I can paint them and be done with the room!

Watercolor Resist

Who knew?!  Rubber cement!  I saw this cool technique over at Sand and Sisal.  Called water color resist.  I love how they turned out.  Very easy and fun to do.

 

Just grab a stencil, rubber cement, water color paint and watercolor paper that is at least 90 lbs weight.

Place your stencil on the paper and apply a THICK coat of rubber cement over your stencil design.

Let the glue dry completely. I placed mine in the sun for about 5-8 minutes.

Now time for the fun part!  Paint.
Before I use the watercolor paint I like to brush on clear water over my paper.  Then I add my water downed color of choice.  The color then bleeds a bit since the paper was already wet.  The rubber cement acts as a shield and resists the watercolor paint.

Now Kim over at Sand and Sisal is really talented with her watercolors.  So check out what she did.  I kept it simple, I just wanted shades of blue.

Once again the paper has to dry completely.  I set mine in the sun for a 5-10 minutes.

Then use a clean finger and rub off the rubber cement!  You will be left with a white design.  If you  use paper that is thinner than 90 weight when you do this step your paper will rip and get holes.

Now for my obvious disclosure.  If the rubber cement is not thick enough, the watercolors will seep through a bit.  I'm not sure if it was the brand I used or I just need to really lay it on super thick.  I thought I had but obviously not since there are small areas of blue streaks. 

I actually like the imperfections.  Just wanted to share what happened to me.

Thanks for looking!