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Snowman Ornaments Complete

Snowman Ornaments Complete

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Thanks for all the suggestions for completing the back of my snowmen ornaments. There were some great ideas which I might have tried except for the fact that this was supposed to be a quick project. I have seven ornaments and I already have thought of more than seven people that I could give them to as holiday gifts. So I really couldn’t do them back to back or I would have had to double my workload. I liked the idea of a cord around the edge or blanket stitch to snazz up the design, but again, that would take much more time than I have allowed myself for this project. So I took the easy way out and fused black craft felt circles to the back of each ornament. Before I did that, I stitched on a hanger with some black shiny cord that I have in my stash.

Here’s the back of one of the ornaments. I didn’t worry too much about an exact circle but just cut them to match the felted circles. You can definitely tell it’s hand crafted!

And here they are all together. I kept thinking I should be naming them like the Seven Dwarves, Happy, Bashful… But they were all fairly happy so I wasn’t sure I could come up with enough names meaning Happy.

I did use plastic over the last set of six while felting to see if there would be less transfer of black and red fiber to the snowman face. It was slightly less and definitely kept the surface of the felt a little smoother. The one on the bottom right is the one I didn’t use plastic on when felting and it is a little darker than the others, maybe.

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And here they all are separately a bit bigger. All the faces were stitched with #5 perle cotton and the hat bands are sari silk ribbon. I don’t usually do “cute” so it was a departure from my usual style but I enjoyed creating the different faces on each one.

Have you created any holiday decorations this year? We’d love to see over on the forum, you can post any photos of your hand crafted holiday creations here (either past or present).

Felted Mistletoe Ornaments

Felted Mistletoe Ornaments

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I hadn’t done much felting lately as I have been trying to get all my Level 3 Art and Design homework completed. So I decided I would make a holiday wreath because I had lots of nice Wensleydale locks that were already dyed green from making my umbrella tree. I thought I had a wreath form so I went out to the garage to get it and lo and behold, no wreath form. Instead I found 9 whiffle balls with jingle bells already inside them that I had used for Christmas ornaments a long time ago. So I decided maybe I could cover them with felt and still make a wreath by attaching them together somehow. I wanted to use things that I already had without buying anything new.

I searched through my wool and found a variety of yellow, yellow-green, green and blue wool. I created three batts on my drum carder. I took photos but none came out so I’m sorry I can’t show you a photo of the batts. I covered the whiffle ball with a portion of batt, tacked it in place with a felting needle and then covered that with Wensleydale locks.

Here’s a photo to show you how much wool is on the outside of the ball before felting. Very squishy!

Next I tied them up into a leg of pantyhose. This is the same way I make cat toys. Then I threw them in the washing machine with a load of wash.

Here they are after felting. I was still thinking that I would make them into a wreath but when I laid them out, I just wasn’t impressed with it.

Here’s a closer look so you can see the locks. So what to do now? I definitely needed to add more color than the green so I went to my studio to see what I had in red. I found burlap ribbon with red threaded through it that I was sent to try several years ago. You can see more about the burlap here. I decided I would make individual ornaments and make them into mistletoe.

So I machine stitched the burlap together around a hanging ring. The rings were actually the only thing I bought for this project. Everything else I already had in my studio. The little snowflake “buttons” were stitched on by hand.

I then cut some mistletoe leaves out of several pieces of hand dyed felt that were left over from making a couple of hand stitch books. These I hand stitched together and added a few clear E beads to represent mistletoe berries. I used beading thread for the stitching and to put all the parts together. It was interesting threading a big long darning needle up through the whiffle ball to connect the burlap ribbon to the top of the ornament but I got the construction all worked out in the end.

I connected the ball to the ribbon with some pewter beads that I had in my stash and added the red bow from scrap felt left over from some felt poinsettias. This is a link to the tutorial on how I made the poinsettias.

And here they are, felt mistletoe ornaments to hang and steal a kiss from your sweetheart. I’m selling them in the shop so we’ll see how they go. I still have no holiday wreath for the door but I did use up some more scraps and supplies languishing in the studio.

What are you felting for the holidays?