The Felted Gnome Journey

A few months ago I saw a video online on making gnomes by Sarafina. It was nice and simple, just a nose, ears, hat and lots of hair. I thought, that can't be too hard so I'll try it. But I can't ever do things exactly the same, so I added an entire face on this gnome, plus some simple arms and feet.

Next, I made one with a very simple armature for the arms and hands.

Earlier in April, our felting group met to make gnomes taught by one of the other members where I made this teeny tiny gnome. The teacher, Wendy, gave me some wonderful tiny Bluefaced Leicester locks for his beard.

And finally, I made a companion for this last tiny little gnome. This the work in progress.

And this is the completed product.

Happy Easter!

I've recently started needle felting. I've done a few things and this bunny and egg are the third and fourth things I've done so far. The bunny was made following a tutorial from Sarafina's website on basket bunnies. I also followed a tutorial on using hand carders to blend grey and brown fibers for his pelt.

I also decided to try my hand at felting a floral egg. There's a honey bee and grape hyacinth, crocus and wild purslane blooming on the egg.

My Fuzzy Nuts: Woolly Felt Acorn Earrings

It's been while since I posted a new blog entry, but now it's time I do something about that. Once of the things I've been keeping busy with is making lots of felted acorn earrings out of wool. Nice soft light weight fuzzy earrings. I started making them last year and put a few on my Etsy shop. This year I'll be selling them at the local handweaver's guild sale as well, and I think I'll put a few up on this blog too.
The nut is made of wool that is needle felted and then wet felted to create a very firm, dense and smooth little acorn. Usually the wool is Merino but sometimes Corriedale is used. Sometimes the nut is hand felted and then died using a good, light fast commercial protein fiber dye and sometimes it's felted from pre-dyed wool.
The caps used are oak acorn caps and vary from red oak,


to white oak:


to fuzzy burr oak caps:



The metal parts are brass and the ear wires are either Vintaj natural nickel free brass french ear wires in small or large, or nickel free brass lever backs.