Tuesday 15 December 2009

Holly Felt Notebook

A friend had asked me to make a present for his wife with some winter leaves on, since she had liked the autumn leaf bag he'd bought for her a few weeks ago. So I of course thought of holly, as you would. I'd saved these Christmas cards from previous years since I liked the design, and so used them as my starting point, minus mice!

Being quite brave and foolish I had a go at cutting holly leaves out of pre-felt and tried wet-felting them onto a background. I never really thought it would work since wet-felting blends all the edges so much, but you never quite know until you try - I thought I might end up with some spiky bits of leaf left, but all I ended up with was oval shapes with fuzzy edges, should have known better really.
So I made another wet-felted flat piece, let it dry, and needle-felted my design onto it. I've not done this before, I've just done 3D birds and a cat, I broke 4 needles (definitely more practise needed) but in the end I was happy with the way it looked. Here is the reverse where you can see all the coloured fibres having been poked through by the needle - when I was finished I lightly wet-felted both sides of the design just to blend everything together.
With the red berries and ribbon to brighten it up I hope it'll be just right for a Christmas present.

6 comments:

  1. Louisa, that is stunning! The edges are really crisp - well done! If you want to know what I want for Christmas next year... ha ha (or should it be ho ho?)

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  2. It should probably be 'ho ho ho' because hos seem to come in threes for some reason. Right then, that's you sorted for next year!! Better get some more felting needles at my rate of breakage! xx

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  3. That is really fab. I'm chuckling here cos I broke lots of needles when I first started needle felting so I bought a box of mixed needles and since then I haven't broken another one :-) Practise makes perfect as they say. You certainly have perfected the art cos your holly is amazing so maybe you won't need a huge box of spares :-)
    A x

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  4. Perfect! I am making little book covers today so may try your idea.

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  5. I love your holly note book, it looks very neat. I too save things I like to inspire me, I just can never remember where I put them, but they are always somewhere 'safe'!
    Love
    Lyn
    xxx

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  6. Lovely work and very festive looking!

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