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A Spooky Needle Felting Project for Halloween

October 13, 2017

Now that you’ve started using your newly acquired needle felting skills, you could try putting them to use to make a creation for Halloween! I spotted this “How to Make a Halloween Felted Skull” project recently and wanted to share it with you as it’s needle felting with a difference. This project is ideal for beginners but does give you a rather specialist outcome at the end. A great way to get kids crafting and interested in learning needle felting all in one fell swoop!

You Will Need

  • Polystyrene skull
  • Clover pen style needle felting tool for three needles
  • Pack of fine clover felting needles
  • Needle felting pad
  • 2 x white roving
  • 1 black roving
  • 1 bright pink roving
  • 1 turquoise roving
  • Ball of black wool yarn (not acrylic, tapestry wool would work fine)
  • Ball of bright green wool yarn (not acrylic, tapestry wool would work fine)
  • Project Templates (pdf)
    – right click on the link and choose “Save Link As” to download the template to your computer – it downloads direct from the Hobbycraft website.

How to Make

Pull off tufts of the white wool roving and lay them over the polystyrene skull. Use the pink Clover tool to stab the wool so that it adheres to the polystyrene base. You’ll need to use enough wool to cover the whole skull hiding the polystyrene underneath. Ensure there are no loose bits of wool as this will create a solid base for the rest of your wonderful creation.

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Needle Felting the Eyes and Nose

Lay a small amount of bright pink roving over the eye socket, use your finger to push the centre of the wool to the back of the socket and fold in the edges and use the pink tool to stab into position.

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Work all the way round the inside of the socket. Add some semi-circles (from sheet of templates) to add the petal shapes to the outside of the sockets.

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Take one end of the black yarn and one single felting needle. Outline the flower eyes. Only cut the yarn when you have outlined the eyes and got back to your start point. Use the pink Clover tool to stab over the whole surface of the eyes to ensure it’s well and truly secured.

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Use the black yarn to outline the shape of the nose, so that it looks like an elongated upside down heart.

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Pull off a small tuft of black roving, lay it over the outline of the nose and stab it into place, folding it back on itself where necessary.

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I decided at this stage to create some black centres to my pink flower eyes with the black wool roving, in order to give them a bit more depth.

Needle Felting the Teeth

Draw a line with your yarn through the centre of the teeth, using the single felting needle to tack it into place.

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Starting from the corner of the mouth use the yarn to draw ten semi-circles, keeping them approximately the same width but getting slightly longer as you reach the two front teeth. The bottom teeth are easier because you’ll already have the shape and width of the top row to use as a guide.

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Making a Sheet of Pre-Felt

Make a sheet of pre-felt for cutting out shapes to add as decoration to your skull. Lay out some wool roving across your needle-felting pad (in one direction and not too thick), layer more roving across the top at 90 degrees. Ensure there are no visible gaps and stab it all over with the Clover tool. Every now and then carefully peel the pre-felt from the pad, turn it over and continue stabbing from the other side. Hold it up to the light and if you see any thin patches just add more roving. Eventually you will have created a sheet that is strong and which you can cut shapes from.

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Make a sheet of pink and a sheet of turquoise for the following steps.

Decorative Flowers and Petals

Use the pink pre-felt to cut out the large flower shape and four teardrop shapes (see templates) Use the turquoise pre-felt to cut six tear-drop shapes.

How to Make a Halloween Felted Skull #halloween #skull #felted #needlefelting #diy #decoration How to Make a Halloween Felted Skull #halloween #skull #felted #needlefelting #diy #decoration Place the large flower over the centre-top of the skull and use the Clover tool to stab it in place securely. Outline it with the green yarn and bundle up a little of the turquoise roving and stab into the centre of the flower.

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Arrange and stab the tear-drops into a symmetrical pattern. Outline them with the green yarn and add a few spirals! Be as creative as you like – the brighter and more colourful the better!

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Original article can be found here.

The Beginners Guide to Needle Felting

October 4, 2017

Felting is a craft which uses wool fibres to produce your creation. There are two types, dry and wet felting. With needle / dry felting, a specially shaped needle is rapidly pushed in and out, multiple times, between wool fibres causing friction between them, thus tangling them together to create a denser volumed object. You use a barbed needle (so take care!) and stab repeatedly at your wool against a resistant object in order to tangle and compress the wool. Using this technique, you can make any number of 3D objects in any sculptural form you want to. The only limit to what you can do, is your imagination!

For the would be needle felter, or indeed for anyone just interested in learning more about how to felt wool, we’ve gathered together on this page some “how to” videos to help you get started with this interesting craft.

This first video gives a good overview of how to needle felt and is ideal for the absolute beginner. It’s not very long – under 5 minutes, so you don’t have to sit glued to your device – and so is perfect if you’ve always wanted to know what needle felting actually is but haven’t asked the question. The sound track is music only with information being supplied by caption, and thus is ideal if you want to watch the video but can’t have the audio on.

Good for:

  • absolute beginners
  • those without audio
  • anyone wanting a quick introduction.

 

The next video I’ve collected for you is a little longer at a fraction over 10 minutes. Whereas the previous one was a quick overview of the needle felting process, just to introduce the idea, this one goes into some more detail and is really easy to watch. It has an audio explanation of the process and is very informative.

Good for:

  • a slightly more detailed look at the craft
  • those with audio
  • anyone who likes a commentary.

 

So by now, you’ll know that needle felting uses wool or wool roving. This next video is all about the wool. In it, the presenter explains what different wools you can use in needle felting and in which circumstances you would choose to use which type.

Good for:

  • an introduction to the types of wool used in needle felting
  • those with audio
  • anyone who likes a commentary.

 

I hope you’ve found these introductory videos helpful and are tempted to have a go at needle felting yourself. There are so many things you can make using this technique and you really are only limited by your imagination. We’ve seen some really cool results, particularly mega cute needle felted animals! For example, check out an earlier Crafty Bug post here to see some gorgeous little sheep.

We’ll be adding more videos, “how to guides” and needle felting project ideas so do come back soon and check out what’s new.

To get you started

If you now want to try out this fabulous craft for yourself, you are going to need some basic equipment. As you’ll have seen in the first video, the main items you’ll need are:

  • a needle felting tool (ie a needle!)
  • wool
  • a needle felting mat (your work surface).

This needle felting tool from Minerva Crafts has five needles in one, an easy to hold handle, a clear plastic protective cover over the needles for that all important added safety and has great customer reviews too. Given that you are working with needles, you really need a needle felting mat to act as a work surface not only to protect your table / knees or whatever you are working on, but also to help extend the lifespan of your felting tool. And, of course, you’ll need some wool roving for practice and to start working your inventive magic on. We like this assorted bundle of 100% wool in a 5 different colours. Other bundles with particular colour themes are also available.

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