Felted Balls Cheer Up Dreary Decor {A Guest Post}
I don’t know about you, but I was a little sad to put away the Christmas decorations this year. Everything looks so plain without them, and that’s a bad feeling when winter [is slowly melting into spring]. It feels like we need alternative decorations to keep the house cheerful during dreary days.
I have this lovely blue tray I bought from Hobby Lobby a while back, and I imagined it full of something pretty, sitting on my big dining room table, bringing a little color to our days. I imagined loads of felted balls, decorated in stripes of different colored wool.
I don’t quite have the tray filled up yet (it’s a big tray, and the balls are somewhat time consuming to make) but I’ve got a good start. Maybe by next year my tray will be full.
In the meantime, I wanted to share the project with you in case your home needs a little post-holiday[pre-spring] pick-me-up, too. Don’t be scared if you’ve never done needle felting before. This is a really easy project, the supplies are minimal and can be purchased at any craft store. Just keep your fingers out of the way and you’ll be fine.
Supplies
- Wool roving – lots of a base color and little bits of accent colors
- Needle felting tool (I use one from Clover that has four needles)
- Needle felting mat (I use the brush-style one because I like it better than the foam ones)
- A sink that makes hot water and a pair of rubber gloves wouldn’t be a bad idea, either
Instructions
Grab a big handful of your base material. If you want to be precise you can weigh out the same amount for each ball, but felting is naturally not very precise (as you can see by the fact that some of my balls are not really ball shaped at all) so I wouldn’t worry about it.
Begin stabbing the roving with your needle felting tool, slowly working it into a ball shape. This is kind of tedious, but also wonderful for stress reduction.
If you get bored doing it all by needle, go to the sink, put on your rubber gloves, get the hottest water you can stand and rub the wool between your hands. This will speed up the process considerably. You may need to needle felt it a bit again once it’s dry to get the shape you want.
You may also have to put a little extra roving in toward the end if you’re getting a crease in your ball. Or just go with the natural look.
Once you have your base shape (and it’s dry if you used water) apply accent colors with the needle felting tool. You can make stripes, wrap it like a present or felt a shape on top if you happen to have a piece that’s more stone than ball. The point is to have fun with it and view it as an organic process rather than something you have to get right.
You can keep punching as long as you like, but it doesn’t actually take that much needle felting to get the accent wool to hold on.
Repeat this process as many times as you like. Here are a few of my examples.
I really like the look of these – rustic and colorful, easy to make but still a skill that a lot of people haven’t tried. If you try this, I’d love to hear how it goes.
Thanks so much to Julie for giving me a chance to share! Come visit me at sarahewhite.com if you’d like to see more of my crafty ideas.
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