A long, long, long time ago Lady M asked me how long it takes to make one of these felty things and I had no idea. This is the one project where I actually paid attention to the time. In total, it took three hours, that included snacks, drinks, chatting and moving the eyeballs three or four times.
All you see here took an hour and a half and most of that was spent on the details. Making the flower took the rest of the time because I felted each petal individually and it's harder to needle felt thin flat objects. Sometimes wet felting is a better option for thin pieces but you do have to wait for them to dry.
Size wise you can see what three hours got me. There's a trade off with size, obviously the larger an object the more stabbing that's involved. But it's easier to do the detail work, which gets fussier the smaller you go.
This is what he would look like with flaming red curly locks.
I should say for safety purposes you should never needle felt distracted, angry or under the influence. The needles are very sharp. That being said, we generally have cocktails on Stabby Nights and on this particular night we had Raspberry Mimosas which were quite yummy and as a bonus I now have this awesome bottle to use for potions.
The inspiration for this cactus came from Woolbuddies. I don't have any experience with the kits, but the book is awesome and I think the style is easy for beginners to pick up. Many of my stabby friends started out making the simpler Woolbuddy creatures. There are a few how-to videos that are worth checking out. The frog and the penguin are favorite among my friends.
Welcome to Creepmas Day 12 5/8, because no I'm not done yet. Let me introduce you to my little friend.
Although sightings are rare, the Siberian Long Necked Yeti is most notable of course, for it's long neck. It is also easily distinguished from other species of Yeti by the silky tresses that cover it's large round feet. Another interesting trait of this Yeti is the absence of arms, but that is generally considered an advantage for these cave dwelling creatures.
As I've said before it's too hard to do tutorials about needle felting. For one I don't generally know where I'm going until after I've done it and for another the urge to repeatedly stab is too strong to stop and take pictures. I love this cross stitch pattern, the sentiment is the same for needle felting.
I did however happen to take two pictures during the felting process so I could consult experts to ensure I was being anatomically correct. The first being whether or not my proportions were accurate for the average Siberian Long Neck Yeti and the second on whether or not I was making the feet excessively hairy or the correct amount. Apparently all that fur is necessary to protect their rather tender, delicate feet.
The first picture was taken at the Crucible. Have I mentioned how awesome it is that we have a local bar that hosts Dark Arts & Crafts every Sunday afternoon?
This video by Sarafina Fiber Art on how to needle felt a gnome gives some excellent advice on using curly locks starting at the 24:00 minute mark. It also gives some excellent advice on making a gnome.
For my Yeti's very hairy ahem, feet, I cut my locks in half. And then I folded those in half before felting them onto his feet. I used the coarser locks underneath and saved what she calls the pretty locks for the top rows.
Because of climate change and loss of habitat over the last decade there has been an influx in sightings, especially in urban settings.
Not that I was trying to make good on my threat to do Easter in July, but my little buddy here didn't get finished until after Easter and then summer showed up and if I don't post about him now, I'll forget by next Easter.
Since we're talking about Easter, I finally got around to watching the second season of Happy! and it is to Easter what season one was to Christmas. It is so wrong, and bound to become a Creepster holiday classic. It's Rated TV WTF: Weird Situations, Tasteful Nudity, F***ed Up Bunnies, Viewer Discretion Is Advised. And the trailer below, it's a bit graphic, so you know, probably don't watch it if you have kiddies or co-workers around.
I know that no amount of palm weaving tutorials are going to keep me from going to hell and I'm ok with that. I grew up in a very Catholic family, which as you can probably tell, has had some influence on my art. As a kid I accepted all that was Easter, from the resurrection of Christ to the magical rabbit that hid eggs and put treats in baskets. As an adult, I'm just in awe that we celebrated all that crazy wrapped up in one holiday without anyone batting an eye.
As tribute to the holiday mash up of my childhood,
I offer Zombie Jesus Eating Bunny Brains.
I don't really do tutorials on felting, once the stabbing starts it's hard to stop and take pictures. But I'll run through the basics on the off chance it gives someone ideas of their own. For reference Zombie Jesus is about 8cm tall. He started out as a white oblong sphere. I added a layer of zombie green over the top for his head.
Zombie green is a mix of olive, sage, green, evergreen, or whatever else I feel like throwing in. Except for black and white, I rarely ever use just one color of wool. The red robe, brown hair, pink brain are all a mix of at least three different shades. Even the bunny is a mix of yellow and white.
Because A) I like to think it looks more interesting, B) I like buying multi color sample packs from local vendors, so I have small amounts of lots of colors C) It takes a lot longer to run out of specific colors and D) When I do run out of a color, I never worry about having to buy an exact match.
The robe I added in sections. This would be easier to explain in pictures, but I'll give it a shot. When I want a thick straight edge, such as the bottom and sides of his robe, I lay down some wool flat and give it a few shallow pokes to set the fibers. Then I fold over an edge and give it some more shallow pokes. Shallow pokes because you are trying not to poke the fibers all the way through. It can't be helped completely and that's why it'll need to be flipped, given a few more pokes and then flipped back again, more pokes. At this point you can set it on your object and poke with abandon to attach it. I just did this for the sides of the robe and filled in the rest by laying wool directly on his little body.
The white washed Christ of my youth always had burgundy robes and long brown hair. A friend let me raid her stash of Merino wool for his luxurious locks. Merino has a smoother shaft, and I like it for fur or hair.
This video shows how to layer wool for long fur. It's pretty close to what I did except I did way too many rows, too close together. I wish I had taken a picture so you could see what Zombie Jesus looked like when he had big beauty pageant hair.
It was pretty easy to fix, I ran an eyebrow comb repeatedly through his hair to thin it out. The tines on the eyebrow comb are fine enough to grab the wool, I just had to be careful to thin it out evenly and not pull out any big sections. Then I gave him a haircut with cuticle scissors, which have never even seen a cuticle, but I love them for needle felting.
The following is a quick and dirty brain felting technique that I came up with on the fly. Sometimes I get a little too caught up in the details and I did not want to stress over proper placement of brain ridges on this teeny tiny brain. This method enabled me to avoid the part of my brain that makes me mental.
I imagine the first part of this process is similar to spinning wool into yarn. That is if you were to ignore all the time tested techniques that result in a strong uniform yarn. Like I said, quick and dirty.
Step 1: Lay wool fibers out in a line and roll back and forth until you have some that resembles a loose string. Add more fibers to the ends to make it longer, add more fibers to the entire length to make it thicker. I use some pretty hi-tech equipment for this, namely my hand and my thigh. Also wearing pants helps the process. That's right, in a seated position I roll the wool up and down the top of my thigh. Pants provide a grippy surface to work the wool against.
Step 2: Once the fibers are matted enough that the string isn't going to fall apart, start twisting it one direction. Twist tightly enough that it twists up on itself. To tame all the loose fuzzies you will have to do this a few times, stretching out the string and twisting it tighter. If you want it really smooth you can dip it in soapy water and then twist, essentially wet felting it. If you decide to get it wet, make sure it's completely dry before moving to the next step.
Step 3: Spread out the brain matter and lay a bit of darker wool over it. Poke it a couple of times to tack it to the brain.
Step 4: Roll the brain matter into a little brain ball around the darker wool. Poke it a few more times so the brain ball stays together. Then poke it a couple more times, just for the shear joy of stabbing a brain ball.
This bunny was kind of a pain. I feel it's a bit too large in proportion to Zombie Jesus, but still small enough to give me a headache. His dastardly tiny limbs and ear were difficult to needle felt without stabbing through the other side or my fingers. After I needle felted them into the general size and shape, I dipped them in soapy water and rolled (limbs) and pressed (ear) to wet felt them. This gave them structural strength without drawing too much blood.
[Note: All crafts require a blood sacrifice, as demanded by the gods. Some, such as needle felting, just require more than others.]
After the bunny was assembled I used my trusty cuticle scissors to cut open his little head, partly insert the brain and then stab it into place. A fine needle was used to poke in any stray dark red fibers and then some bunny flesh was built up around the brain. After all my careful work my brain still wasn't perfect, there was a low spot. That was easily filled with a little tiny ball of pink and no one is the wiser, except for us of course.
Is it just me or from this angle does it look like Zombie Jesus is breastfeeding a dead bunny? Maybe he just likes to slow dance with his food. Anyway, the final touches were to add a face to the bunny and arms so Zombie Jesus could hold his feast.
Of course none of this helps me understand why a rabbit would decorate eggs. But I think I figured out how the Easter Bunny manages to fill all those baskets in one night. I mean Santa gets magical flying reindeer and a sleigh to carry everything while the Easter Bunny has to hop the whole way and doesn't even have opposable thumbs. But Jesus is just a baby on Christmas Eve, he doesn't even have his super powers to turn water into wine yet, so Santa needs all that extra gear. On the other hand by Easter, Jesus is an able bodied zombie and he can totally give the Easter Bunny a hand. Not only that, but by then he has his super powers, and they probably only have to carry one basket of goodies and just duplicate it fish and bread style.
Now that I understand it all, I feel a little bad about having Zombie Jesus eat a bunny brain. But he looks so cute eating his little bunny brain.
I realize I'm running late on the Easter posts, but Easter starting it by being late this year. Truth be told, I still have a few Easter or Creepster projects to finish so don't judge. Or judge, I don't really care, it's my blog and if I want to do Easter in July, I will.
My first contribution is Bunny Cthulhu, isn't he adorable?
I really like needle felting, it doesn't take a whole lot to get started, a felting needle, some wool roving, a surface to felt on and the desire to do a lot of stabbing.
They make brush mats for felting or you can use foam. I bought an inexpensive upholstery foam remnant from Joann. My local store has a bin in the back full of remnants. The piece I got was big enough to cut into plenty good sized blocks to share when I have friends over. The three inch thickness is probably overkill, but I like it. Most blocks sold specifically for felting seem to be 2 inches.
I started out with a single needle a friend gave me. That's how they get you addicted you know. It just takes one needle. And I did a lot with that one needle, but needles dull or break and it is useful to have different sizes and types. I have a set like this that I really like.
My experience in buying wool roving is limited to local craft stores and farmers markets. The chain stores all carry the same stuff. Literally the same exact product, just with their store brand on the packaging. Yorkshire Rose Farm is a vendor at one our local markets and they always have a wide variety of colors and wools, including curly locks. The one mistake I've made is accidentally buying Merino wool. It's very smooth and silky so it's better for welt felting than needle felting, but it can also be used for hair/fur. There's ton's of info on all the different breeds and how the different wools felt up but I've found Romney seems to be the most readily available for needle felting.
For wet felting all I use is bubble wrap and a dish towel. I don't do a lot of wet felting but it's useful for thin pieces. Since I just make small embellishments I start with needle felting to set the fibers in place before wet felting. I believe any type of wool can be wet felted.
The best part of needle felting is all the stabbing. Occasionally I have friends over for Stabby Night, it's very therapeutic. Now kids, you shouldn't drink and stab, but we do. That's also why I keep band aids and Neosporin in my stabby kit.
Unfortunately the worst part of needle felting is also all the stabbing. There comes a point where all the angst leaves your body and your hand starts to cramp. It does help to only stab as deep as necessary. If you stab through your project and push the fibers out the other side, you then have to stab them back in, which is just more work. Only stab with the barbed part of the needle, going deeper doesn't get you anything, except maybe hand cramps.
I also want to give a shout out to a club that just opened up this year, Crucible. They host a wide variety of events that you are not going to find at your local sports bar. Every Sunday afternoon it's Dark Arts & Crafts (and Games). There's no cover and you can bring projects to work on or play games. I love that a club supports us crafty folks by offering up their space so we can carry out our craft addictions. As much as I love hosting Stabby Nights, having a place to meet up with friends is pretty wonderful too and it's because of Dark Arts & Crafts that I got these two projects done.
I would have more felting done, but my friend sidetracked me with Pysanky eggs (that'll be another post). She got quite a few of us addicted and the Crucible has been very supportive of our large group of egg people and helping us get enough tables to set up. I can't say enough how awesome they are.
It's hard to take pictures of the felting process, because the urge to just keep stabbing is so great. My first felting post, and my zombie bunny felting one have a little more info on felting. The Bunny Cthulhu basics are as follows:
two balls one for the head, one for the body
two wings, first needle felted for general shape, then wet felted, then needle felted to polish the edges and add detail
two ears, basically the same as wings with less detail work
five tentacles that started out as three logs, alternating needle stabbing with rolling them like clay to shape them, cut the logs in half, the sixth piece can be used as an appendage on something else
Attach the head to body by adding some loose wool between the two and stabbing. Attach the tentacles by layering loose wool, the cut end of the tentacles, and more loose wool onto the face. Stab the loose wool into a pleasing (or nightmarish) shape around the tentacles to hold in place. Stab in details with small balls of felt such as black soulless eyes or dark pink beauty marks.
A couple years ago I felted a few creepy eggs, one of which was an eyeball. I wanted to make another one, just a little bit fancier this time.
See flowers, that's fancy right?
It's not very egg shaped from the sides because of how I built up the eyelids.
The vines are made by rolling small amounts of wool roving into tiny strands before felting them on. You can keep adding more wool overlapping the ends to make the vines as long as you'd like. I roll the wool down the top of my thigh. I like wearing jeans or pants with a bit of texture for this. If you want tighter vines get them wet with soapy water and then roll and twist. Either way, always work in the same direction. The flowers are little balls, the leaves are little mice turd shaped rolls. Using a finer felting needle for these details helps a lot.
Couldn't resist asking my favorite zombie hand to model my new eyeball egg.
I added a little needle felting to my Creepmas this year. The frog is from a previous post. The tree is combination of hemp, wire, beads, glitter and tatting.
If you were around last year you might remember the Cthulhu Snowdeity inspired by the Cthulhu Snowman card by AmysNotDeadYet,which can still be ordered by the way. This is the felted version. I'm currently working on another one and once I see which method works best, I'll write up a tutorial.
I'm not thrilled with how these others turned out, but I can count them as a learning experience.
The Yeti. I like his teeth.
My Creepy Snowball that doesn't look very creepy or snowbally.
Probably shouldn't have given him hair.
My Sinister Snowman. He looks more like a crotchety old snowman,
yelling at the snowkid to get off his lawn.
My favorite creepy felted snowman of the season is the guy lurking in the back, that a friend made. He was actually created with Steven Wright in mind. I'm pretty sure he's up to no good. The snowman that is. I don't know what Steven Wright is up to.
Well another Creepmas season is at it's end...Who am I kidding, that's a lie. I still have Krampus recipes to post and there's a lot of posts from other Creepers I haven't read yet. And the Krampus Advent is still going. So I'll still be here keeping it creepy. Thanks everyone for making this another twisted fun filled Creepmas.
This is the last post about Easter stuff, at least until next year. I've already covered zombie bunnies, this time it's creepy eggs. The color mix of wool is the same as the bunnies for the rotten flesh, blood and bone.
[One great thing about hiring a zombie hand model for a photo shoot is paying an hourly rate for just the hand.]
For the brain I started with an egg shaped. Then I alternately snake rolled and needled felted pieces of pink wool until I had a long rope of it. I swirled it around the egg and tacked it on with a few pokes. Then I mixed some red and black and poked it into the crevices.
The eye started off as just a white egg. And then the magic wool fairies showed up. I really don't know what happened, I didn't expect it to turn out this good.
The bunny skull also started out as an egg. I thought if the egg was very loosely felted I could just felt the features into it. Maybe I should have built the skull up around the eye and nose sockets instead of just trying to hollow them out. Also the egg being narrower on top didn't help. Those eye sockets are felted rock hard. It's so hard, I broke a needle. Maybe I could have cut into the sockets to make them deeper. I just decided to quit before I made things worse. Oh well, better luck next time and I'm sure I learned something from the process even if I haven't quite figured out what it is yet.
Last time I wrote about how I learned to felt using basic shapes. Bunnies are no different. In fact I made the simplest bunny ever. One body ball, one tail ball, couple of eyes, a nose and two ears.
And then I decided enough of the cutesy crap, school time is over. Let's get into the good stuff. I started with simple shapes again for the zombie bunny. Sphere head, flat triangles for ears; long cones for arms, legs and body. Note that the neck and where the arms and legs will attach is not as firmly felted. It's easier to attach bits if you leave the wool a little wispy.
You might think pink is an odd zombie color unless you are making brains. When I thought I was going to make the most awesome hamster ever I bought a small package of pink wool for the ears and nose. A small half ounce package is actually a lot and I had all this pink left over. I thought I could get away with using it as filler, which is what I did will the ball bunny. It looks mottled because I used pink as the base with white over the top. I didn't realize how much I'd have to cover it in white for the pink not to show and decided it wasn't worth it anyway. It's already cute, it might as well be pink too. For my zombie bunny I decided to use that to my advantage.
I went with a mixture of green for the zombie bunny's main color. It's a lot of olive green, with some green green, a bit of tan and a smidge of dark green. I just pulled bits of wool and randomly layered them together and did that a few more times to mix it all up. Don't ever feel like you have to use one color at a time, in fact I think it's more fun if you don't.
Originally I bought just a few colors of wool for specific projects, but then I ended up buying these multi-color rolls in the brights, pastels and earth tones. Various craft stores carrying them packaged under different brand names, but as far as I can tell it's all the same stuff. By mixing the colors I can get close to any shade I want and I have a better idea of which colors I use enough to buy separately.
Update: Now that warm weather is upon us, I've been hitting the local farmer's markets and there is a lot of wool roving popping up. The prices are better than what I've found in the stores, with lots of colors to choose from. I'm no expert, but the quality seems better too. The store bought seems a bit matted in comparison, maybe a result of the packaging process? Also pay attention to the type of wool. My eye always travels to the Merino wool which is gorgeous and silky, but from what I understand is difficult to needle felt and used more in wet felting. Romney and Corriedale seem to be the most popular for needle felting.
And here is where I covered the pink pieces in the green mix. Some areas the layer of green wool was a little thin and after felting it disappeared into the pink wool.
Here more green has been added until everything was as thick and firm as I wanted it. [I feel morally obligated to insert a "That's what she said." joke here.] All the pieces have been attached and just starting to poke in a few details.
After that everything came together so fast I didn't get pictures. More green wool was added to the face to fill out the cheeks, add brows and a nose. The teeth and bones were made with white wool mixed with a little yellow and brown. The eyes are a mix of red and black.
The bloody bits are mostly red with brown and black. Needle felting is naturally conducive to making bloody wounds. Whenever you poke the needle in it creates an indent. If you want to make a smooth ball you have to keep moving it so you poke evenly all the way around. If you want a bloody gash, you lay down a bit of red wool and concentrate your needle in that area.
I don't have many pictures of this guy. Sadly I had used up all my pink, so he started out as a white ball. Overall I think he's an adorable zombie bunny, but I have to say I prefer having meaty pink undertones showing through here and there. Not at all ironic that in trying to use up the pink wool, I've found a use that will lead to me having to buy more pink wool.
He was just going to be a toothy zombie bunny head, but I didn't really think that through. It kept tipping over because of the big ears, so I gave him a body. I used familiar shapes from my unicorn days.
Here is the white ball covered in zombie green. I poked a line where I wanted the mouth to go, cut along it with small scissors to open it up and then kept poking the inside of the ball until the mouth was big enough.
Otherwise the rotting green fur, the bloody bits and the crusty teeth use the same colors as the other bunny. I used a mix of pink, red and black for gums and to attach the teeth. He has a bunch of teeth you can't see in the picture. He also has a lovely neck gash you can't quite see that I'm quite proud of. For the eyes I went with the cataract zombie look. A little bit of light blue, grey and white over black balls.
While I'm on the topic of zombies and bunnies, I got the best book from the Easter Bunny this year, Pat The Zombie by Aaron Ximm and Kaveh Soofi. Now I don't love just anything that's been zombiefied, a girl has to have standards, but this book is awesome. It stays true to the original while creativity embracing the zombie theme.
This book is so much fun, but one of my favorites is the scratch n' sniff remains. I recommend getting someone else to scratch it, because the putrid smell lingers on your fingers, even after soap and water. Reminds of that one time in Mallrats.
I don't know why, maybe it's the bloody trail, but the last page of Judy's survival manual makes me giggle. "Sss-sh! Bunny is creeping!" In the original it was "Bunny is sleeping."
