Friday 26 August 2011

Fifth Day of the Fifth Week of the School Summer Holidays - Wet Felted Beads

Our activity today was a new craft for both Lara and I - wet felting. I saw some lovely felt beads and a tutorial on this blog and also a 'how to' video on You Tube.

I bought from Ebay some Merino Wool Tops/Rovings. A 50g pack cost just over £3 including p&p. The colour I bought was called Wildberry - a mixture of purple shades.

We cut off small pieces and teased the fibres apart slightly before roughly forming i into a ball in our hands.


We then took a tiny bit of liquid soap and some hot water and started to roll the felt ball in our hands - like you would roll a ball of play dough.


We continued doing this, rinsing the ball and our hands under the hot water from time to time and gradually the ball became thicker and smaller.


Once the balls were fairly hard we then started rinsing the balls in cold water too. This had the effect of shocking the wool and made it shrink even smaller until we had a bead.


After making a dozen or more beads these are now drying in the airing cupboard and tomorrow if they are dry we'll thread them onto some elastic thread to make a funky bracelet. Hopefully I'll be able to show you that tomorrow.

1 comment:

Lynn said...

Look forward to seeing how it turns out. Often wondered about this kind of felting.