How to: Heart Felt Soaps...

Lovely Lady Leanne from Feel At Home brought me over some of her New Zealand olive & avocado oil handmade soaps (with sea salt and infused with essential oils of sweet fennel & Roman chamomile) to felt.

So I thought I would document the process as I notice I haven't blogged about anything for a year or so, which is very slack of me...

1. Choose your soap and some colourful wool roving (merino felts nice and easily).

2. Using a block of foam & felting needles, very lightly needle felt some wool into squares large enough to wrap around the bar of soap.  Two thin layers of wool works well - one ontop of the other, fibers lying in perpendicular directions.

3. Wrap the square of lightly felted wool around the soap and wet it, so that all the fibers are dampened, using the hottest water you can stand (rubber gloves will help)!

4. Using a thin sheet of plastic (eg. cut up shopping bag) - wrap this around the hot, wet, woolly soap so that it makes a parcel.  Then rub this parcel on all sides ontop a bamboo mat or non-slip piece of plastic mat. The roughness makes the warm, wet wool fibers felt together when rubbed.

5. When the wool has started to felt together and feels a little secure around the bar of soap, take it out of the plastic wrapping, get it nice and damp again with really hot water and then get back to rubbing it directly on the uneven surface.  Keep this up for around 15 mins until the wool has completely felted on all sides and fits snuggly around the bar of soap.

5. Rinse off the excess soapy suds under the cold tap and leave to dry on a wire cake wrack. First layer is done!

6. After a few days, when the outer layer is dry, but the soap is still a little moist underneath, it is time to needle felt some designs onto the base layer.  I use a size 38 felting needle.  Careful with your fingers or you will leave blood marks on the felt....

7. Finished!

 

Bruneau Jasper Squid display

I've finally got around to updating my Bruneau Jasper Squid piece, which I had been meaning to do for sometime, but now with a 9-5 Mon-Fri office job I have had to slow down a bit on my creative urges (unless this includes creative accountancy?).

I wanted him to be able to be displayed on the wall as a picture when not being worn and so came up with this....

He sits on a canvas covered with felted merino wool, etched sterling silver fish and beads sewn on. He simply sits on three nails hammered into the wooden canvas frame (covered with Thai Hill Tribes fine silver etched heishi - purchased Fair Trade).

The Squid body features a gorgeous polished Bruneau Canyon nodule from Idaho, near Mount Home (USA).  This material is no longer available for collecting as the government is making a bird sanctuary out of the canyon.  This is the King of the orbicular jaspers. Purchased (as usual) from one of my favourite stone suppliers, the Heart Of Stone Studio in the USA.

This piece also includes a vintage (1940s) 'blinking' dolls eye, bronze (etched and patina and mica powders applied), Faux bone, brass micro-screws, sterling silver oxidised wire, Thai Karen Hills Tibes tiny beads (fine silver and vermeil - Fair Trade), natural freshwater pearls in white and pink, natural pink spinel gemstones, merino wool (wet felted and needle felted), sterling silver caps (for the 'tentacles') and UV resin.

Length of Squid - about 29cm.

Following a Pattern...

Arghhhhh! I'm still just not in the mood - feeling flat. At times like these I try not to force myself to create anything, as if I do the results will just make me feel even more deflated.

But I find this is the ideal time for me to curl up and relax with some patterns I've stashed on Ravelry and some beautiful wool (Aslan Trnds La Pampa) that I picked up for a REAL bargain online here at Webbs.

I don't have to think about anything - I can just follow the pattern and watch TV! A while ago I put this pattern by John Brinegar of Yarn Ball Boogie in my project queue. It a long, long, long crochet scarf that looks well 'fierce'.

Aotearoa Neckpiece

Aotearoa (pronounced [ao tea roa]) is the most widly known and accepted Māori name for New Zealand. It is used by both Māori and non-Māori.

I was invited to contribute to a group show at 'Quoil Contemporary Jewellery Gallery' in Wellington, NZ (www.quoil.co.nz) the title of which is 'Aotearoa'. It needed to be a neckpiece with earrings.

To me (being a recent migrant to this beautiful country), NZ equates to sheep, wool, blue coastline, lush green grass, paua shell and the native Māori peoples. Quite a simplistic view, but hey that's me!

I wanted to combine my love of spinning, which is something I have recently learnt how to do here in NZ on a NZ made spinning wheel, with a wearable piece of jewelry.

First I dyed some polwarth sheep wool and kid mohair locks using blues and greens. Then I spun it into yarn adding in pieces of paua shell along the way.

The centerpiece is a vintage (1940s) 'blinking' dolls eye which I am using to represent the Māori peoples. The eye is set into Faux bone using UV resin with tiny fine silver beads and gold plated washers and vintage pink glass shards.

 I am quite happy with how it turned out. Its definately something that I would wear. I made simple earrings to match with oxidised sterling silver.

 

  

COLOURS Exhibition, Estuary Arts, Orewa (NZ)

I've got some pieces in an exhibition called 'COLOURS' at Estaury Arts Center in Orewa (North of Auckland, NZ) during March. This Squid is one of them - I like him alot as he was fun to make and has felt (tentacles and necklace/cord)!

I need to work on my names for things though as the most creative title I could come up with for him was 'Felted Squid' ....or something similarly boring.

Gosh - my two little kiddies are off tomorrow for 3 nights holiday with their dad to the Coromandel. I'm going to miss them SO very much, but have lots of things waiting to be created in my head. Plus I get to have a lie-in in the mornings (can't remember the time that last happened - and no nappy changing!).

I'm also finally getting around to doing a one-on-one 3 hour lampwork class - which I won in the Beadhold Wirework challenge last year. Its with Lisa-Jane Harvey at Born To Bead Studio in Auckland. Can't wait - although I know I'm then going to go off on another tangent wanting to make glass beads/critters....

Maybe I could then felt them....?