Felted Mushrooms with a Secret

Last December I made a couple of these wonderful little felted mushrooms to send to my seasonal swap partner and I have been meaning to make more ever since and I finally got a chance to do it :)

I found a lovely tutorial for creating a secret mushroom with a great hiding spot for a message or poem to be hidden within the wooden tree limb stem. I just happened to have some alder limbs that I had cut into smaller chunks drying in the basement and used hubby's power drill to drill the hollow spot in the center and it was just perfect for a rolled scroll to fit in :)

I didn't have any sheets of red wool so instead I used some of my dyed merino wool roving that I had and created a felted circular shape. To create the wavy mushroom cap I actually put the felted wool circle on top of the wood limb and wrapped an elastic band tightly around the cap about one inch from the top. As the elastic pulled tightly around the wool it created a gathered and ruffled sort of appearance and then I through the whole thing into the dryer for about 10 mintues *grin*. When I pulled it out the heat had dried the wool up nice and tight and held its shape perfectly when I pulled the elastic band off :)

Of course since we are jumping head first into spring and we spotted our first dandelion today I thought it would be very fitting to hide one of our favorite dandelion poems inside :)

O' DANDELION

O' Dandelion, yellow as gold, what do you do all day? "I just wait here in the tall, green grass, 'till the children come to play."

O' Dandelion, yellow as gold, what do you do all night? "I wait and wait, while the cool dew falls, and my hair grows long and white."

And what do you do when your hair grows white, and the children come to play? "They take me in their dimpled hands, and blow my hair away!"

~ by Marlys Swinger

I can't wait to hide more little notes inside them for the children to find!

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Sewing By Hand

I love the rythmic movement of sewing by hand. The pierce of the needle and the constant motion of pulling the thread around and through. I could do it for hours on end letting my thoughts wander and ripple like waves... constantly moving, free and fluid. So soothing to my soul :)

I've been spending many evenings lately quietly stitching after the children have gone to bed. Quick little projects that bring near instant gratification. Seeing the fruit of my work come together with ease makes my heart sing. Especially when it's little surprises for the children to enjoy in the morning.

In past years we've had an abundance of pussy willow buds that would put on a fuzzy spring show. The children would have fun picking some for bringing indoors where they could stroke the soft little blooms again and again, usually until they popped right off their branches *grin* but these days there are less and less of them to be found.

Spring is calling every bone of my being these days so I wanted to bring some of that newness indoors even if I couldn't find it wild in nature :)

I've been cutting wool cloth and twirling little snippets of rose and cream colored wool rovings to create our own pussy willows. I found a lovely little tutorial quite some time ago and have been meaning to make some ever since but just haven't made the time. So these past evenings I've been puposely collecting my sewing box and creating little woolen versions that we can place on our nature table. They are coming together so wonderfully :)

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Spring Chicks

I am moving full steam ahead into spring and surrounding myself with cheery colors and springy items like these little chicks I've been making *grin*.

I had some old sheep's fleece in my craft cupboard that hadn't been carded so I lugged out my big drum carder and cleaned it up nicely to use as the centers of my chicks. I just couldn't bear to use all of my new pretty yellow wool rovings to make them so I wound a tight ball using the natural cream fleece (sorry I can't remember what kind it is) and then just wrapped enough of my yellow corriedale roving around to cover the white and then wet felted them.

I'm really pleased with how the yellow balls turned out :) I was afraid that the yellow would slip on the white as I started to lather and rub it around creating bald spots showing through but I made sure I was extra gentle and it blended together beautifully. For the bottom of the egg shell I used an old plastic easter egg as my form and worked the wool over top of it so that it formed a nice concave shape for the chick bodies to sit in and I trimmed up the edges once they were dry so that they looked like that had been cracked open *grin*.

I was at a bit of a loss though when it came to how to felt a sheet of wool that I could cut out shapes from for the tops of the chick's heads as I've never tried doing it before. All I could think of was that I've seen others do it using bubble wrap or window screen and other similar things to keep the wool together while they agitated it but I didn't have any of that on hand. That was until I spied one of my reusable mesh produce bags! I loaded it up with enough wool roving to make a small 6 inch square, put it in the bottom of my sink on a cutting board and lathered it up and it worked! I think next time I'll work it a little bit longer to make sure it is a little more compact but it felted together enough to cut out little pieces to put on top of the chick's heads to look like bits of broken shell :)

What do you think? Do they look like they're popping out of their shells *grin*. My oldest was giving me a bit of a hard time before I put their eyes and beaks on because he said they looked like tennis balls with stars on their heads LOL.

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

The Snow Queen

Earlier this month we participated in a seasonal handmade exchange and I wanted to share with you the beautiful 'Snow Queen' that we received :)

She is so pretty with her wool felt dress, leafy wings and seashell cap. She's the perfect addition to our little nature table and the kids just love how she sparkles as her wings glow beneath our nut tree :)

Inside the little package was also another shell and this pretty orange wool. Oh my how I love orange and yellows so this is just perfect. Thank you so much Sarah we just love everything so much :)

Now I just need to think of something really special to make with our new wool. Any suggestions?

Hugs,
Rosina

Felt Leaves for your Nature Table

Yesterday in my linky love post I shared about the great felt leaves I had found in my bloggy travels and today we got down to business making some *grin*.

This is a fabulous fall project to do with your kids :) The sun was shining again today so we headed outdoors to collect maple, poplar, alder, redbud, oak and other leaves. If you plan on using real leaves and not images from your computer make sure you pick your leaves on the greener side because we had a few that were crunchier and they definitely don't do well when handled by little hands! LOL.

As you can see we didn't strictly stay with fall colors either. L being the girly girl had to do hers in pinks and purples. Hey it's all about personal interpretation :)

Even my oldest son got in on the project and made good use of his boy-broidery skills.

My 4 year old was pleased as punch with his mad tracing skills...

and he was just whipping along with the needle and thread to! I love doing craft projects with all of them. We're nearly to the point where each of them can just see what mama is doing and pick up their supplies and go at it... a few more years and the little guy will be there :)

To personalize our project a little more I thought it would be great to embroider the names of each of the leaves right on them!

These are going to be a FANTASTIC addition to our nature table! Crafting and education all wrapped up into one felty fun project *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina