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.