Create an ADORABLE Mini Bunny Rabbit

1. 1 Intro: Everyone, I can't wait to get started with you. We're going to be creating this adorable tiny little bunny. I was thinking it doesn't have any little pores which are quite hard to create. It's just a simple design. I just think this is going to be such a cute little project. I have been making custom bunnies for a few years now. I would say I've been needle felting for about a decade and I've been a bunny lover since I can remember. I'm very excited to be teaching you all the basics. Basically, if you've never felt it before, that's completely okay. We're going to get some cor wool, going to stab it with a needle and walla. You'll have a perfectly cute little bunny that maybe matches your own bunny or maybe you just thought it was a cute design. I don't know. But yeah, I want everyone in this course to feel really taken care of. Yeah, if you have any questions, just let me know. I can't wait to make a tiny, cute little miniature needle felted bunny with you. 2. Materials: We're going to be learning how to make this, this is all the materials that you'll need. Wool, I get my needle felting wool from world of wool. This is core wool. It's fluffier, it's cheaper, and then this is your tops or your roving wool. So as I was making this, I used this to sculpt the shape of the bunny. It's almost like stuffing. It's a lot faster to shape, and then I go in with my colored wool on top. I'm going to sit here so that I can put the list here. Cool, roving wool in your bunny is color of choice. If you want to make a purple bunny, I cannot stop you. Then for the accessories, you will need some white for its beautiful fluffy tail. Black, minuscule amount for the eyes. Then a bit of peach. I actually mix it. I find that a mix of these two colors is perfect, but if you want to obviously get one, I would go with peach for the inside of the ears. That is it for wool. Let's talk about needles. I get my needles from Heidi feathers. I really like them. There are lots of different kinds of needles, and I'm going to be using three for each stage. So the gauge of the needle refers to how thick it is. They're usually around 36 to maybe 40. The higher it goes, the thinner the needle is. The first needle's job is just to get us started as quickly as possible. And then the higher it gets, I use more for details, more for smoothing the whole thing out. The needles in question are I'm going to start with a 36 star, your 38 gauge twist. This one, I would say is optional. It really helps when we're doing those tiny little eyes and just the details is a 46 crown. I'll put Heidi Feathers needle guide there because I think it's very helpful. I'm just going to mention the only other necessary thing and then we're going to get into just a few other extras and then you can start. So a felting mat. With needle felting, you're going to be having your project, stabbing it with your needle and you want something to catch the needle. This one for beginners, this one, if you want to go extra. I really like this one from Annie's hand felted creations on Etsy. It has a light side and a dark side. All of these products are in the description, although I don't think I could find this exact one, but I'm just going to link to something similar like a cheap phone pad on Amazon. Now we can get into the fun optional stuff. There's needle holders. Right now, I've just actually been holding my needle like this. Some people put a little bit of tape on it just so there's something to grip. But if you'd like a needle holder, I have this wooden one, so you take it out and there's also just a place to store your needle so you can swap it out and point it the other way and then it just slots in there. I also used this pink one. It stores three needles at a time, which you won't need right now this project, but it's a good needle to have for needle felting in general. Yeah, those are my two options for needle holders listed down below, but I'm just going to be holding my needles as they are. The only other thing is finger covers in case that's something that you would want. I'll also list them down below. 3. Getting Started: Every needle has barbs in it, little dips. Whichever direction you poke the wool in, it's going to be catching on to little fibers and pushing them into whatever direction your needle is going. This happens every time you stab the wool. So if I stabbed this and pulled this fiber, pull this fiber in in in 1,000 times, that is going to create a solid object. Not really solid, but it's all a scale of this to something firmer like this. To be honest, this probably has about this much wool inside of it. Wherever you stab, it's going to compress and tangle into whatever direction you're pointing your needle. So basically, whatever area you stab is going to compress down, there's going to be a dip just because you're scooping all that wool in towards the center over and over again. So it's going to lie a bit lower and it's going to be more tight. Therefore, the whole thing is going to be more dense overall. Basically, that's how Na felting works. The more you stab at something, it's going to be pulling the fibers inwards, the fibers tangle more and more and that is how things become solid and before they get solid, that is your opportunity to shape it. That's how Na felting works. It's like fibers tangling together, and before they tangle and get really solid, that is your chance to sculpt it. Wherever you felt more is going to dip down. So I filtered this more at the sides. I start with every project with a circle like I did this one, and then I felt it here, I felt it there, so this body is quite thin, really. I felt it here to give it a flat bottom, and then I added more here to give that roundness. So yeah. That is my spiel over. Let's get into it. This is very fluffy and if I just start stabbing it like this, I think I would get there eventually. That's how I started. But you don't want to be like how I started because this doesn't look like a bunny. How I would recommend you start is you roll up the wool like this because this means that we're going to be catching more of the wool every time we stab into it. All right let's begin. I have my coll, I'm going to be using this 36 gauge needle because this is on the thicker side, so it's going to be good for bulkier work, which is exactly what this is. We're just going for a small orb right now. Pull it up. I've got a little parcel. It's not going to look like a sphere already which is fine. I just want to get started. Here we go. A few tips, obviously put your needle in and bring it out, but don't bring it out at a different angle because the needle would probably break and I would probably cry. Always got my finger there. It does happen, but it's not really that bad. Like so, just like this, you can do it from any angle really. I'm just doing it like this so that you can see. I've got my fingers quite close, but if you wouldn't feel comfortable with that, you can always just stick another needle in. It does mean it's going to bounce a little bit, but that's okay. All right. I've been stabbing here and it's already worked like it's not bouncing up like it used to. That's our goal is to make it a solid object. While it's becoming solid, that is your opportunity to shape it. So if I were to just stab all of it like this, it would just become really flat and this would be its shape forever basically. But what I actually want is for it to evenly compress all around to make a circle. Because the wool is going to go in the direction of your needles because the little hooks in it are going to take the wool wherever it goes. If I do this a couple of times, there's already wool starting to appear here. So we can use that to our advantage to even out the sphere by taking this bit, which is quite fluffy. I haven't really felted it yet, and I'm going to use that moldableness to my advantage and poke it towards the center. Now I'm just evening out what I did to the middle. I poked the middle quite a bit and now it's my chance to make sure all these flyaways go into the center. Again, if I poked it like this, it would just be flat. We want a even sphere. I'm going with this bit make sure I'm always poking in towards the center. This bit needs to go inwards, but as well as poking it towards the center, I'm actually just going to smooth it over first and just hold it down like this because this means that it's going to be more compressed to start with, so it gives me a head start. I'm going about this deep with my needle every time I'm doing it quite fast, but don't be afraid to take your time. This is what it's looking like so far. It looks like a bit of a mess, but as long as I keep obviously that's a corner. We don't want a corner. I'm just going to poke it down. And it's already gone. As long as I just keep doing it evenly around, we're going to get to a sphere about that big. I've noticed another bit of a flyaway here. This is the main body. It's quite tough. I'm just going to take this tiny bit here so that I can hold it with my fingers and it's already compressed as I start to stab it. I'm pinning pieces down and poking them towards the center and smoothing them over like this. I would say it's all the spectrum from that really fluffy stuff we had in the beginning to something really solid like this and maybe this is somewhere in the middle. But we're aiming for the final project to be really solid because in my opinion, that means that the color sticks on more easily. I just find that it means you have a better control over the whole project. It's maybe been about 5 minutes. It's this squishy, but we want it to be really solid, so let's keep going. It's also a bit patchy. There's a dip here and here and it's all just a little bit lumpy. If I stab it more, that's going to make it more even. Let's keep going. If you're looking at this and thinking there's no way it's the right size, I'm just going to give mine a little bit of time, although I am thinking this is going to be a little bit too big in the end. And then you can also just move it as you go. That makes it all really even. This patchiness that we had before where it was a bit lumpy here and there was a dip here, that has faded a bit, which I'm really glad about. It is about this squishy, so I'm going to keep going. You'll also find that the stiffer it gets, the more pressure you'll have to add to your needle, which is why we're going to switch to a thinner needle when we add the color. Every minute or so, I'm just picking it up and turning it around and thinking which bits are flat, which means I've filter them a lot, which bits are sticking out more, which means they might need felting a bit more. I'm seeing a lot of almost corners. When I see one of those, I'm just going to think it's about here, where's the center. It's about here, so I'm pointing that way. Then it only takes that much for it to be gone. Because the more like this your wall is, the easier it's going to be to attach to things. This could attach to this pretty easily. But if you can imagine if we have two super solid things, it's just harder to attach because there's less loose fibers that are going to tangle in with each other. We've shaped it into a sphere while it tangles. So I would say it's about 80% there. This is how squishy it is. So if you imagine this as a semicircle, because we're going to be adding the head a bit later. So what we want to focus on is creating a flat base. So what I want to do is just choose any side on this to compress. If yours is a little bit lumpy and has a few dips in it still, you can pick any kind of dip that your sphere might have. Mine is actually perfect. I'm just going to pick here and I'm going to be stabbing all around here, which is going to compress it and create that sort of flat base that we want. Like I said, we want to shape it before it sets in its how it's tangled and it's solid form. But really, there is no 100%. I mean, I could probably create a flat side here on this if I wanted to. It just takes a bit longer the firmer that it is. Awesome. That didn't take too long and I like the look of this. It's still bigger than this one, and I would say it needs to be actually a little bit taller. What I'm going to do to flatten the sides and elongate the height of it, I am going to because wool will go in the direction that you stab it, I'm actually going to poke it this way. That means that the sides are going to go in and also you can already see more wool flowing to the top there. So you can hold it down like this, and I'm just going to go all the way around. Although if yours is pretty high and the sides are fine, then I would just do needle felt everything a little bit more and get it to size. What I could do is needle felt the sides inwards as we've been doing and then just add more wool on the top. It's just killing two birds with 1 stone. Right now, I think this is obviously bigger, but I'm all right with that. I'm all right with the size and it being a little bit bigger than this one. I think if I filtered it more because it's still got a little bit of squish in it a little bit more than this one. I could felt it a little bit more and get it rock solid, but I don't think I need to. I think it's probably about 90% solid and that's good. So yeah, at this point, if you have any finger guards on, just take them off for a minute and feel if there's any dips in your project. Just take note of if you'd like the so this is the body of your body. It's only going to get a tiny bit bigger around the same even when we add the color on top. So this is it. If you want it to be bigger, then what you're going to do is you're going to take more wool and pin it on top, when we were smoothing it over in the first stages, just smooth it over and then stab into it. Soon enough, it's going to be attached and you'll never know it was there as long as you start with the very loose stuff. Actually just going to take a little bit of the very fluffy core wool, roll it between my fingers. I'm just going to pin it on top right there. I'll have flyaways. So if you can grab onto those, your fingers can be a bit far away. You've got it on top of where your dip is and I'm just going to stab it inward like that. You can see the separation, so I'm just going to keep going a little bit. 4. Attaching the Head: I'm going to start creating the little head. It's quite flat here and then I'm thinking I'm going to attach my head right here. This is because it's not a perfect semisphere and this bit is a little bit more raised than say this side. I'm just a little bit taller than a normal semisphere then we're going to be creating this little head which maybe about a third of the size of the body. I'm going to roll this up and see what size it is and if I'm happy with that size. This is as tight as I can get it and that is going to be way too big for the head. I'm going to grab. I'm going to take some off actually. That is a little bit bigger and it will shrink down more than it is right now, but I still think that's going to be too big. I only have about this much cool and I'm going to roll it up and see what size it is compared to the body. That is really small compared to the body, especially since it's going to compress even more than it is right now. I have about this much wool now and I'm just going to see that's about the size that I want the head to be. I want you to grab a tiny bit of wool and just start smaller than you think with the head because it needs to be smaller than you think it should be anyway, just because it's so small. The top layer actually makes a big difference with the final size. You want the final head of the bunny to be a little bit smaller than you think it should be. Also, I'm going to add a little bit more wool on. So I've rolled it up like this, which wasn't too hard because it was very tiny, but it does also mean that there's not that many places for my fingers to go. If you want to what I do is I like to grab a little bit at the end and twist it, and then you can actually just hold on to this. Then we are going to grab our 36 gauge needle as usual for coral, start stabbing it a bit. Right now, it's really flat and I've been angling my needle just straight downwards, which is evident by the fact that it's a bit stuck into the mat here, which is fine. I just yank it off. Of course, while it's still a little bit fluffy, this is my time to shape it. I don't want the final thing to be really flat. I'm going to take the edges and smooth them over and around a bit and pull it back into that circular shape to stab at the bits that aren't so tough. I went for the middle and then I saw that it was becoming flat and there's also a lot of loose bits of wool around the outside. Then I just take the outside and scoop it in so that it's a more rounded shape. About every ten or so stabs, I'm just picking it up and seeing the shape because this is going to be really fast. It's only this big. I just by feeling it, it's very tough around the middle, which makes sense. That's where I filtered it and it's squishy on the outside. I could smooth this over, but it's not really big enough to do that. I'm actually just going to take this bit here, which is a bit looser and it's also sticking out, if I'm thinking in terms of a circle. I'm going to take this bit and felt it in towards the center. I've got in my head a sphere and I'm thinking, what doesn't fit into this sphere look that I'm going for? I would say currently that little poking out bit there, stab it. Then it'll go down, stab it in towards the center, and it'll even out. So obviously, it's not really a sphere right now, and it's very squishy. So that is good. That means I still have some time to shape it. Since there's not one bit that's poking out, but it's all around a little bit lumpy, I'm just going to try and even out where I'm poking it. See if I can. I'm doing no more than ten stabs like this. Sometimes I don't pull it all the way out. Just when my fingers are close, I usually pick a spot like here, and then just go like that. It's right on the tip, but it's not quite coming out. I'm going to move it around as I go, just spinning it with my fingers. I think that's quite good. Our next goal is to attach it right here. And since this side is a little bit more raised, I'm going to put the head on that. Usually, I would say at least mini lops heads are going to be about there, but this bunny is looking up, so I'm just going to do it. Right on a diagonal looking upwards. What I'm going to do is take this wall picking up with my needle and I'm going to stab it into the head a little bit. I'm using the moldableness of this wall to mold these two solids together. I'm stabbing this a little bit into the head, and then I'm stabbing it into the body, and then I'm going to go a little bit in between as well. We can already see that that has shrunken inwards and it's attached it a little bit. It's attached on this side, this side, not so much. This flyaway bit of wool and I'm going to angle it through the head so that it goes through and then into the body. I can also do this to attach both solids. If I didn't have this bit here, I would just go straight through the head and into the body as much as possible because although it's not going to be as quick to mold into it, it still will just slower. So for the most part, that is how I attach things. I'll go through one object and into the other, which means that wolf from the head is going to be going into the body and wolf from the body is going to be going into the head. Now I'm going to use this little bit to my advantage and just lay over right in between and stab right in between the two objects. All right. You can see how quickly pieces like this are just going to disappear into the whole thing. If I stab this enough, I'm going all around the part where the head meets the body and just ping that in. It's already disappeared into it. I did a mixture of just going through the head into the body, and then I took loose parts and with these loose parts, I'm just going to stab it right into where they meet. Because this also will create a nice transition between them that's smooth and doesn't look like a snowman gap between objects. 5. Shaping the Face: How we're going to make this bunny look adorable is the face. If you look from the front, you can't really see their eyes, and that's because one of the main things that helped me transform my bunnies was adding the dip where their eyes are, not so much at the front, but around the eye and back a bit. Or you can also think about it as building up the eyebrow and their cheeks. You can think about it like that depending on your bunny, if the cobal that you have for the face, if it's too big right now, you're going to want to make a dip for the eyes. If it's too small, you can add more on and build up the eyebrows and the cheeks. There's going to be eyebrow and then a dip for the eyes, and then it comes out even more for the cheek more than the eyebrow. And then also optionally, you can add a little bit of a dip, I aim for a triangle there for the chin. What you also want to do is make sure that the head is just slightly smaller than it's meant to be in the final product. That's because the final layer of color is really going to make it bigger than it's meant to be, I find, more so than the body. To avoid that, we're going to make the coal structure of the face just like a millimeter smaller. And the other coal thing is to make sure that the place where the ears go is really firm, especially that, but the whole of the face should be pretty solid and that's going to help you carve out those details as well. The reason I say especially where the ears go is that as you're attaching it, you're going to be stabbing it a lot. And naturally, that's going to create a dip and naturally, that's going to create a dip where the head is, and it might throw the whole face that you've done out of proportion. So how to mitigate that is making sure the whole face is solid and including the back quarter of the head. As always with needle felting, one of the core things is that the more you stab something, the more it compresses and compresses means it's going to become more solid and it's going to get smaller. Just for some troubleshooting, what that means is that if your face is too big and it's not solid, what you can do is just k or felt it more and then the fibers are going to compress and it's going to naturally get smaller and we want it to be as solid as possible. That's also going to happen. If your bony face is too big and also solid, what you might need to do is take out some wool. I actually just pinch it, pull it, and I would do that thinking about how you want to carve it in general. We know that we want to take away wool, well we also want to take away wool where the eyes are. Let's pinch wool from that area and then just stab it afterwards as well. And same for troubleshooting vice versa. If your face is too small, add more, not to the eye area, well, in balance. But in general, we're going for this bit and this bit to be raised, add wool here, and here if it needs to get bigger. Finally, if you think that your bunny head is about the right size or if you're not sure, go for smaller because you can always add more colored wool on top. But if it's around the right size, you can always just needle felt where the eyes are because it will dip down even though it's not like it needs to become firmer. You can still just do that and it's going to dip down. It might take longer, but in my opinion, there is no too much needle felted. It's just infinite. Yeah, I will take you through all this on the mat, but those are just the things to bear in mind what we're aiming for and what we're going to get done in this episode. Good luck. We've got the head and the body attached. Now I just want to make it look good. I've made it small for a reason because I'm going to be adding a lot of wool onto this head to even it out and also define some features. I'm going to position it right here on the nose. I'm just going to pin it either side. Obviously, it looks a bit bulky right now, but hopefully it's going to shrink into just being a point on the nose. It's attached. I only did two pokes and I'm just seeing, it's in the right place. This is the line that I wanted it to be looking, so the nose would be right here. I'm just going to smooth that over and poke it right into the nose even more. I also want it to have some cute little bunny cheeks. What I'm going to do is take also where the point of the nose is meant to be. Right there, if you imagine the nose is here, the eyes are here, so the cheek is going to be right here. I'm going to actually take this wool and poke it along the bottom half of its face. That basically disappeared. You can't really see that it has chobby cheeks just yet, so I'm seeing already that I'm going to need to add another layer for that. But let me just do the other side. I'm going to take this over and stab it right there. What I'll do is I'll sort of catch a little bit of fiber and I could pull it around here if I wanted to. But that's going to be where the mouth is, and there's usually a dip there. I'm not going to bring the wall there, but I do want it to have a little chubby cheeks. So I'm going to take this wall and actually just going to sort of make it a bit more compressed by winding my needle round. Now it's in a bit more of a line and I'm just going to there. Then the flyaway is gone and it's also contributed to the area that I wanted to raise up. I'm also noticing a little bit of a dip there that I'm going to add wool to. So I've got a little bit of wool and I'm just going to stab it into that area. And if you're like me and you haven't made the head all that solid, it's just going to disappear into the project the first few times. And I'm actually just going to twist it a little bit so that it's going to all be in the same area. Like so. At this point, it looks like there's going to be a whole lump on the bunny's face, but this bit is still pretty loose and fluffy, if I stab it more, it's simply just going to compress in. I want to tweak a few things. My two balance, but I'm looking at it and thinking this bit is coming up a bit already. It seems like if I just tap it there, it's barely balancing and it's leaning this way a little bit. I'm just assessing it and noticing how it's balancing and what this base is doing. It leaning to the left means that there's a dip here and it's coming up a bit more here. At this point, you can add wall or compress wall. I could compress the right side down and make it be level, or I could add more wall to the left side and make it be level. Now, because I like the height of the bunny, I don't really want to take away from the height by compressing the base, so I'm going to add some wool. If you wanted to compress it down, just needle felt it more. I am just adding some wool to the left side to help it a little bit. And it's not just right and left. I felt that it was leaning a bit more that way than it should because I want it to be a nice diagonal with the head there. So if you feel like your head is going a little bit more this way when your bunny is supposed to be looking up a bit, then what you could do is just add more wool onto the front there, so that's going to make it a little bit more like that. That's what I'm going to do. I'm adding more to the left, but especially the front left. Let me know in the comments if you've stabbed yourself by this point or not. Congratulations if you haven't. I'm just pushing this right in and it could also be that it's still a bit of a dome here, which would make it very hard to balance. I just like to make sure that it's completely flat here, even maybe a little bit concave, I might needle felt in the middle, a little bit more just to make sure that the bunny has the best chances of balancing as possible. All right. Moment of truth. Woops. It might need even more wool here, I think. Yeah, if it's still falling over that way, that means this bit needs more wool. And it might be that you haven't need or felted the whole structure of it that much. So it's more unlike the fluffy side. And I'm just saying this in case you're noticing that you're adding a bunch of wool, but it's just evaporating into it or even leaving a dip if you wanted to raise it up. That's happening because it's not exactly firm enough, and I would just keep adding wool. Obviously, the pores would normally go here, but I wanted to make a really simple design, maybe a little bit cartoonish. I'm just making it very straight here. It's still favoring this way a bit, so I might add a little bit more wool. If you have any questions about this process, then let me know in the comments. I want you to get the most out of this course and just soak up all of the information and all of the experience that you can. Even if it's going wrong, you can just learn about this for the next time. I mean, who doesn't want who doesn't want ten miniature bunnies? I've added some here and that is perfect. I really it's not going to really fall over that way. I would say I've begun to pick up the micro insymmetricalness. I think maybe this side could do with a little bit more and that should only take about 5 seconds for me to just stab that side in and that is perfect. It has passed the stand test. This is what we wanted. We want to be shaping the call so that the bunny is going to be nice and balanced. In this step, we are going to adding more wool to that's the face, the back quarter of the bunny's head. We are going to be adding a lot of wool right here because this is going to support the ears. I'm taking a little bit of wool like this just to start with, and to pin it down either side. And sort of make sure I'm in the right area. So I'm going for the This is the top of the bunny's head. That's sort of halfway point. I'm going to be felting all around the back half. This is because as we attach the ears, it's going to dip down quite a bit and I really want something good for the ears to attach to that's not going to change shape. That means it needs to be as firm as possible right here. I don't want this bit to be raised and I'm actually just going to knead or felt it until it goes back to the original level, but it'll just have more wool in it. I think that's very good. You can actually see a little bit of a coming up a little bit here, so I'm just going to and that is good. That step is complete. I'm first going to start just by stabbing along that middle line of the head. If we think it's looking that way, everywhere that my needle is there. I'm just going to be poking all along there. You can already see a little bit of a dent and it is a bit opposing because you're pushing the wall that way and then you're saying, No, I want the left eye to have a dent too, and you're pushing it that way. But in the end, it's just going to give the bunny quite a strong core, which is good. I'm still angling it this way and I'm just going from side to side like that. Actually, I feel like it's just fallen out of proportion a bit. I feel like it's got an odd shape with this bit coming out, so I'm actually just going to push this in a bit while I'm at it. I feel like I have lost the shape of the head a little bit. It's actually not meant to This is a good moment because I've realized that it's not meant to be this big. I actually just going to pick a little bit out. Out a little bit of that. I just need to ferment that back in again. I think it's better now. I have made some dips in the eyes and then before I add to the cheeks a little bit to make them a little bit more chubby, I think I'm actually going to poke at the eyes a little bit more, but this time, I'm not going to angle straight this way, I'm going to angle a little bit more this way. What this is going to do is it's going to take the wool and push it more into the cheeks, which is like adding wool. You're just moving it around a bit. Anyway. Okay. Now I'm going to add a little bit onto the cheeks. 6. Adding Colour: Congratulations on getting to this stage. This is what I have right now. This is all we need to move on to the next stage, which is going to be adding the color and I'm so excited because we get to use our lovely colored wool. I've been using cor wool up until this point, and there's going to be no more cor wool from this point onwards. We're going to be using roving wool or tops in whatever color you want. I'm going to be going for this light brown right here and I'm going to be mixing this with a few different colors to perfect that color a bit because it's not the exact shade that I want, so I'm going to walk you through that. And what's really exciting is that especially if you're making it of your own bunny, you can add their markings or whatever cute thing about them that you love. This is where it gets fun. You can add the color, add the details. Yeah, let's get started. So here's the game plan while I mix some wool. If your wool is not the perfect shape that you want it to be, mine isn't, mine is a bit too gray. I'm going to be adding these two colors together in a tiny amount just to adjust the warmth of it. I've pulled out some yellow and orange and I'm just going to start pulling it and putting it back together. This is essentially how I mix colors, is how I've always done it. You can get tools for it, but I just do it this way. We're going to be winding your color around the bunny and avoiding the tummy. That's because I like to have the tummy be white like it is here. But for some bunnies, it may look better without the white tummy and we fade into it as well. I'm winding it around about at that border. It's up to you if you want to avoid the tummy. If you don't, then just lay the color here and here as well. The other thing I wanted to mention is if your bunny has markings, just coat the whole thing and then we're going to add the markings on top. But if it's more like your bunnies has two dominant colors, then you can swap between them as I wind the wool around and use. But if your bunny has two dominant shades, then what you can do is just pick small pieces of wool so that you can interchange between the two colors easier. This is the color that I got. Let's put it onto your bunny. This is my bunny. You lay the wool on top and I'm going to be using the 38 gauge needle. Unfortunately, I broke it yesterday, so I'm just using a very similar one which will work just as well. So I have about this much wool, but you can do it in small amounts if you want. I'm just going to lay it on top and just check that you can't see the cor wall underneath. I'm going quite lightly, really. I'm not going at it like I was with the 36 gauge needle and the core wall. I'm not putting as much pressure on. Because I just wanted to sit on the top. I just want it to sit nicely on the top. This bit is needle felted enough so that it stays down. I'm going to go over all of it and smooth it out if it needs it, but right now, I'm just smoothing over a new bit and needle felting it enough so it's going to stay down. I've made the base solid enough that when I knead or felt this into it, it's not going to create a dip in the core wall because that's not what we want. We've finalized the shape at this point. You could still add more roving wool on top to edit the shape a bit, but I only do that if it's necessary. Cool. Now I'm going over to the head, still just smoothing it over with my finger. This is pinning it down. Okay, so that side is good. Let's go for this side. It doesn't have to be even at this stage. It doesn't have to be symmetrical. I mean, I've got more wool on this side at this point, but that's fine. So, I'm trying not to make this bit straight, so I'm just taking it over and then stabbing it. The curve is I make sure that the middle bit is in place and then if I wanted, I can drag this bit anyway I want and it's not going to move. At this point, I'm very much pinning it down with my fingers. Then if I lift my fingers up and a bit pops out, I'll just like this, I'll smooth it back down and it only takes a few more stabs and it's down. I'm going to sort out these bits here. I still want to keep it going straight. I'm just going to that bit looks like it's fallen out anyway. Going to pull that down and I'm smoothing that down. It might be that with these bits, they're just a bit spread out, it's not 100% coverage on this area here, but that just means I might go over it later. The important thing is that these bits are pinned down for now. Also since I don't want to go into the stomach area just yet, I'm actually just going to flip this bit back on itself. Unless, of course, you're not bothered about having a whiter stomach and making the base of the bunny more white, then you can just obviously cover the whole thing in your color. I'm just needle felting the face a little bit more and making sure it settles into all those details that we added the dip where the eyes are and things like that. That is great. Now I've got this bit here, which I would usually carry on going in a line, but I don't want the bottom bit to be this color. I want it to be white. What I'm going to do is actually just You could cut it at this stage with some scissors and then just take a minute to needle felt in the edges where you cut it. But I find it's actually quicker for me to just double it over like that and then it can go up. I just make sure it's at the corner there. Actually, I might just needle felt it a little bit more to make sure it's at the corner of the bunny. Then going into the base a little bit, I'm just doubling it over and I'm going to make it go upwards again. Like that. You might not have as much coming out like this, in which case, you could cut it off, you could double it back and just make it and just tie it off there, and then I'm just going to use this to fill in more of this side area. This lighting is not doing it justice. It looks very soft. It's got to the face now. I don't really worry about these little bits at the end too much. It's just that if I were to go over this way, it would mess up the direction and look of the final product. I just like to keep it off here and make it go around again where the eye would be. You can see where it goes around a little bit, and I actually just going to sort of try to minimize that by dragging it more towards the base of the bunny. So. So I do want it to spill into the base just a little bit, because we're going to have a kind of fade from this color to white. Sometimes the easiest option is just to cut it. I'm thinking maybe I might. No, I think I'm going to cut it. So I'm just going to smooth that over there. So I just brought that bit. I just brought that bit that was going that way. I just flipped it back over. You can see there's kind of a loop there. I'm just going to needle felt that looped bit down so that you can't see it as much. There we go. And then I've just got this little tail. And since I applied a pretty thin coat, I'm just going to use it to go over it to go over this bit again. Really, I just need to apply some color to that bit because I'm going to leave a kind of dome here for the stomach, the white little tummy. I don't really need this much. Probably about half, I will just double it up to make it shorter, and that is about right. And it's all going in the right direction. I think it would just go up a vertical at this point. I'm going to start poking this bit down. So I just made more wool and doubled it over like that and laid it on top of my bunny and then just began to stab it down, which you can see here. This bits not attached, but this bit is and you have any excess wool anywhere, say you were going up here and then you have this bit coming off here, there are a few things you can do. If I laid it on that way, it wouldn't look as realistic. You can also just snip it off. You can double it back around, which I sometimes do. And then just needle felt it all down or you can curve it around. I could use it to be on the chin. Instead of putting it this way, I can change its direction, pin it here, and then needle felt it so that it's going in a different direction. I'm going to keep needle felting this bit down right here. I'll be in quite light. Yeah, I have all of this spare and because I want to keep this tummy blank because I'm going to be putting the white there. I don't really have anywhere that I can put this. I could double it back over that way, but I think it's better if I just cut it. I'm going to leave a little bit of space so that it can just end here where my nail is. I'm going to estimate there. Then I can just smooth that over as best I can. This is maybe where you'd want to use finger covers. There we go. No. I'm just going to add this tiny little bit onto its left side. So I usually step down on one side just to get it attached. Then I will take the other side and gauge is where I want to hold it. Obviously I don't want to pin it that way. I want to pin it maybe about straight up and then I'm going to go more to the side so that it has that curve. I'm going to pin it straight up, needle felt it a little bit. Then I don't want it to keep going straight up. I'm actually going to pin it more this way. Actually, I might just let go at this point, and I can guide it with my needle as to where I want to put it. So if I wanted it down there, I would just take it like that and just stab it there. But I want to go I want it to keep arching that way. So I just take it and put it in there. I have this bit leftover, which I'm just going to use for the chin. I'm also just looking at it and thinking, is this symmetrical, which I think it is. The tummy ends in the same place on both sides and I'm going to add white wool to that next. I could put that over that way, but I feel like that bit's already been done. I'm just going to double this back over. Then what I'm doing is I'm just spreading it around like this would be straight and then I'm just taking these bits. I'm putting them to the side a bit more. Okay, I like that. I didn't really like where that fur was going, so I just doubled it back over just to hide a few bit of spots of stuffing on the chin. All right. Now I'm all ready to add the little white fur on the tummy, here and here. 7. White Tummy: All right, now I'm all ready to add the little white fur on the tummy here and here. All just going to be covered with white. I'm just going to roll it up with my fingers like that and lay it on top. I think I want it to be more of a ball. There we go. That's about a semicircle shape, and I've just laid it on top like that, and then I'm going to start stabbing it down. I'm just going around the outside first so that it doesn't all clump into the middle. It's not that evenly distributed around right now, so I might add more later, and I'm just going to kind of get the rest of it down for now. I'm going to go up into the stomach area as well. Needle felt it a little bit more because it's looking a bit lumpy. I think that's good for now though. You can see some gaps where it's a bit uneven and that will be fixed with the second coat. But before I do that, I'm going to add a gradient between the tummy and the fur. I can do this because they're quite similar colors, but if yours isn't don't worry, it can just go straight to white or you can have a go at mixing them and see how you feel. I'm just taking a bit of white and a bit of that fur color, pulling it apart, and putting it back together. This is because I want there to be a nice fade between the tummy and the rest of the fur. I've made about equal parts of both and then I'm going to roll it up between my fingers like that and see how that looks. That is quite nice, but I think it's also too similar to the fur color and I'm just going to add a little bit more white. All right. This is mine right now, and I think that is perfect. I'm just going to grab a little bit at a time because this is a border to go around the white of the tummy. Lay it on top, and then I know that I want this bit to go up here and curve around the tummy. Thinner needles will always take less pressure, and that's just because the lower gauge needles, the bigger needles are doing more at once. That's why they're not good for details. All right. I've done a little border right there, and now I'm going to take this other side and scoop it round. With these little tiny flyaways, I actually just go around it with my needle in a small circular motion. And then it just follows my needle and sort of tangles in to one strip. Then what I do it was frizzy and now it's in one little string and then I can just stab it down quite easily. And I always kind of think what size and thickness do I want for things? This is too thin and not thick enough, so I'm going to double it over and double it over again and then roll it. Okay. With this bit, I've actually realized that this bit isn't really symmetrical. This side is too far inwards, so I'm just going to pinch it and grab it and pull it outwards. I think that's a bit better, and now I'm going to needle filter it back down towards the other direction. That has left a gap of stuffing, which is good. It's going to be more symmetrical to this side when I fill it in with white. I'm just changing back to my medium needle right now. Sometimes if I want to fill a space, there's a tiny bit of stuffing there which needs to be filled with this color. What I'm just going to do is grab at it like that with my needle, grazing over it. Then that means that some of the wool is going to go over in the spot that I want it to. I can just stab it down. All right, I'm just going to add more white, like a thin layer just because I can see some gaps doubling over just a little bit like that, but I'm still making sure that it's vaguely going in the direction that I want it to, which is down in this case. Then I'm just going to take my lower gauge needle because I don't want to group all of it into one place. That's what higher needles, sorry. That's what bigger needles are good for is grouping all the fibers and just tangling them like that. But the smaller needles are going to be better for details because with this, I don't want to catch all the fibers at once. I want to spread it around and catch this one, put it here in this exact spot. With this one, it's not going to all go in to one spot. I want it to do a little bit and spread around everywhere. I just want to tie off. I'm going to use a bigger needle. Now that I've added a bunch of wool on top, it's not as even as I made it. I'm just going to take my medium needle and poke at the bits that have risen more. This is going to make them lie flatter. I'm just going to add a little bit more white where there's a dip. Of course, the shaping is the cobbles job, but I'm still adding wool on top and that's just going to change the shape regardless. I don't tend to do this with the smaller needles because in a way, you're bending the needle just a little bit and I don't want the thinner needles which could take it less. I don't want them to break. I'm needle felting everywhere even now, just to make the base really flat. I also will sometimes use this technique to blend colors. If I'm taking a little bit from this color and a little bit from that color, it will create a nice in between color when I need or felt them back down. Now I've just got a tiny bit of white wool and I just want to apply it to the end of the chin here where the chin meets the tummy. Actually, I'm going to use this one. So this would be the mouth right there. I'm doing the extra white in like a triangle and bringing it down to the rest of the tummy so that it connects. 8. Lop Ears: Ickon this is going to be just enough for the first ear. Let's get started. I'm going to flip over to my dark side, actually. If you have this mat, go ahead, but no worries if you just have the foam one. I just like to do this because when I'm needle felting something not onto the core wall base, I'm doing it basically onto the mat. It really the wall just gets so entangled into it. You can basically see the remnants of all my projects on here. Anyway, I'm going to take this. It's quite long, and then I'm going to double it up until it's about ear height. Looping it around my finger and doubling it up like this. Then I'll take this, hold it to the body and say, is that as tall as the ear? I want it to be? No, I'm going to double it up again. Is this good? I would say that's good, maybe slightly too short and just roll it in my fingers. It tends to get taller anyway. It only needs to be roughly the right height. I'm going to be using this needle and I'm just using the needle holder because I feel like it. I've got it here and I've gripped that's the end that's more looped and I've gripped the looser end like so. You could also pin it down with a needle if you wanted to. Then I've just laid it on the mat in a strip because obviously this is the final shape that we're going to want. I've just laid it on the map like this and I'm going to felt it like crazy. I've just pinned it down and I'm stabbing it like this. This is actually very wide. This isn't so much of a strip, so I'm just going to take this bit and fold it over. So Now I'm actually going to just peel it off the mat and you can see how much it sticks into the mat. There's all those little fibers tangled into the mat already. I just like to pick it up every so often, flip it around the other way just to even out the sides a bit. I want to take in these edges right here. I'm going to go in from the side into the center like this and my fingers are just standing back. I've actually left a third of the ear really loose. That's because this really fluffy bit here that hasn't been needle filtered at all, is what is going to connect the ear to the bonny. It's looking like this right now. If you don't have the fluffy bit like I do, you can always take more wool and just stab it a little bit onto the ear and then it will be attached. I felt this a bit more, but this time, what I'm going to do is angle my needle. I'm going to poke at the center, but I'm going to angle my needle towards the sides a bit more because we went for a long strip. Now we have that. We have that rectangular effect. It's naturally curved here, but you could always stab it at the sides if it wasn't. Essentially, we want the sides to rise up and the ear to dip down and the middle of the ear to dip down. What I'm going to do is needle felt the center, but I'm going to angle it towards the sides. Then I'm just needle filtering the sides a bit as well because they're not entirely fun. Picking it up and then I'm going to do the same to the other side, and I'm holding it so that I can get that angle on this side, aiming for the center, but just enough so that I can actually angle it into the sides. This is what it's like after I've needle filtered it this way and a bit this way. I'm pushing all the wool into the sides and that has made the sides rise up a bit, as I've been needle felting anyway, the middle has just naturally dipped. I'm going to make it dip even more and just needle felt the middle. I haven't been flipping it over this time because of this side, I want to be more of a dome and this side, I want it to go down in the middle. Now what I'm going to do is just take the sides that are still a little bit loose and I'm holding the ear vertical and I'm just going to poke at the sides. You can see it's coming in a little bit more. I'm going to do the same on the other side. I'm just holding it vertical and just stabbing it down. That is going to go through the middle area, but that's okay. This bit hasn't been needle felted at all, but is very much a part of the ear, very much attached to the ear rather. It doesn't really add to the height. But I'm noticing that the top of the ear is actually quite soft, I still want it to have that loop effect. I don't really want to push down the very top, but I'm just going to go for the middle area. What I'm going to do is take that border and poke it inward like this. I'm poking the middle bit straight down because that's going to make it lie a bit flatter. But I'm not going to need or felt the border on the top straight down. I'm going to poke it this way. That's going to bring it closer to the center but not going to make it disappear as much. I'm going to needle felt around the middle area even more because I really want it to stand out from the border. At this point, I'm just going to hold it up to the bunny and think, is it a bit too tall? I think mine is a bit too tall and I would like there to be less of that dark color. I definitely just want to push this down a little bit. The difference between doing is like this and doing is like this is that you need to be able to fill this space here. So that's why we're going to be adding more wool onto one side of the air so that there's a slope. I'm actually noticing that mine has a little bit of a slope already. It's not like this, it's more angled like this. I'm going to use that to my advantage and use it for this side because if it was this side, then I'm going to have more of a gap here. So now is the time to make adjustments if yours is too tall like mine. I'm just carefully pushing down the top of the down a little bit and sort of more on the border just so that I keep the border a little bit. I've been going here, here, here, and then also pushing more wool to the front from the back as well. That. If you've lost the shape of the top by squirtting it down, I would recommend adding more wool, but I like the size of mine right now. If yours doesn't have a side that's coming out more, and you're just going to put a little bit of the wool into your project, stab it as it's just next to the project on its own. I'm needle felting it where I want the wool to come out a little bit as well because it's already got a little bit attached into the ear and then it's also going to do its own thing over this way. So that's how you would add some wool onto the side of your ear to make it have that slight slope. But on the other hand, if you didn't want to add any height to it, you could also go this way through one side and into the other. That's going to diminish this side a little bit and add wool to this side. If you like it plain like this, then feel free to skip this part. But I'm going to be mixing this color with some pink. I find that this is the perfect color to then apply in the ear. It's the easiest thing. I'll just lay it on top and grab this needle. So you want to avoid the sides of the ear and just go in that hollow of the center. I'm actually just going to make the center a little bit more firm just before I do this as well. If the center of your ear doesn't seem to be as firm as you'd like it, you can always add more wool which will help. Unfortunately, some of it does go through to the back. There's not much you can do about that, apart from make it even firmer, add more wool. You can sort of poke it back through sometimes. You can pull it out and stab lightly when you do attach the peach color. I'm just going to take this end here, and I just sort of went around the wall just to pull it all into one place like that, around like this, and it sort of catches on the needle, and then I just poke it down somewhere. Although I do want it to go higher, so I'm going to sort of flick it this way. You might find it easier with an even smaller needle. You can always add more of that peach color over any gaps that you have as well. I have this kind of excess bit here. I'm actually just going to tuck it in. Mine is ready for showtime. What we want to do is pin the middle of the ear a little bit further back than the borders of the ear, it still has that V shape. Go through the middle of the ear, aiming a little bit backwards. Middle of the ear is here, and then the borders are going to be more over here. I've done a few stabs in the middle and now I'm going to take the border and needle filter in here. I want to attach this even better. I'm going to go through the ear a little bit higher and angle my needle in more at the base closer to where the ear ends. Just doing that a lot, really. Vary in where your stabbing. I do a little bit at the back and then go round to the front of the ear. Like that. But yeah, this bit needs to be straight, which can be a little bit tricky. This bit is bulging out a bit, so I'm going to needle felt it down like that. I'm going to go from this angle and needle felt it this way, especially the sides of the ear. Needle felting this one out a little bit. That sort of curve like it's twisting out that way. Just a little bit from this to this. I'm just going to need a felt here so that it stays. I think that looks a lot better. 9. Upright Ears: Op ear is the easiest and that's what we're on. If you're sticking around, then welcome, welcome. You could do one ear a different color at this point. Both ears are different color, and I'm going to show you how to do a gradient with the ears as well. I had a bunny whose ears, it was like they had been dipped in chocolate halfway down. I got dark brown, chocolatey brown halfway through the ear. I think that looks really cute and I'm going to show you how to do that as well. I reckon this is going to be just enough for the first ear. This is going to be a solid color, and I'm going to do a gradient on the next ear. Let's get started. I'm going to flip over to my dark side, actually. If you have this mat, go ahead, but no worries if you just have the foam one. I just like to do this because when I'm needle felting something not onto the coral base, I'm doing it basically onto the mat. It really the wall just gets so entangled into it. You can basically see the remnants of all my projects on here. I'm going to take this. It's quite long, and then I'm going to double it up until it's about ear height. Just looping it around my finger and doubling it up like this. Then I'll take this, hold it to the body and say, is that as tall as the ear? I want it to be? No, I'm going to double it up again. Is this good? I would say that's good, maybe slightly too short, but I find that it expands upwards anyway, especially if I pull it a bit like this and just roll it in my fingers. It tends to get taller anyway. It only needs to be roughly the right height. I'm going to be using this needle and I'm just using the needle holder because I feel like it. I've got it here and I've gripped that's the end that's more looped and I've gripped the looser end, like so. You could also pin it down with a needle if you wanted to. Then I've just laid it on the mat in a strip because obviously this is the final shape that we're going to want. I've just laid it on the mat like this and I'm going to felt it like crazy. I've just pinned it down and I'm stabbing it like this. This is actually very wide. This isn't so much of a strip, so I'm just going to take this bit and fold it over. So I'm actually going to just peel it off the mat and you can see how much it sticks into the mat, there's all those little fibers tangled into the mat already. I just like to pick it up every so often, flip it around the other way just to even out the sides a bit. I'm just really roughly stabbing it. You really stuck to the mat here. I just pull it off and then turn it around to even out the other side, make sure the other side doesn't have all this wall coming out of it. With upright ears, I like to shape it out a lot and make sure the sides are curving round. But with lop ears, I usually just try to go for the shape, obviously the back of the ear because it's going to be attached to the body. No one's going to see one side of this ear. Just evenly going around. But naturally, I've stabbed it more in the middle anyway. Look at all of that. Again, just flipping it over and then I'm going to probably take this and think the top is really thin. I'm actually just going to use this extra wool coming off and push it over there. That's the top and I'm just going like that. Stabbing. I'm going to catch it here, stabbing. What I'm doing is I'm just leaving this end side here with a lot of wool coming off of it. Actually, that's a little bit excess. I might just pull that off. One quarter of the ear, I just haven't felt it as much. I've half filtered it and that's going to mean that this bit is really soft and can be attached to other things easier. This is the side right here that I'm going to use all this fiber coming off it to attach onto the bunny. But if all of yours is completely solid, then we can always add, you can always just grab a little bit more, stab it on and then you've got all that loose wool coming off of it. Then this bit, I'm going to need or felt a lot more to make it more solid. This side right here is sticking out a little bit, and I'm just going to take it and needle felt straight down into the center. I'm catching it, but also going into the center so that it's going to push all that wool inward. I'm using that bit that's not going to be needle filtered as much as a grip for my fingers. This side is sticking out a bit. I'm just going to stab it down towards the center and the whole thing needs flipping over because I've got all this excess wool here. It is a little bit too big. I think I'm just going to cut off this side just a little bit. Then what I can do is as I'm needle filtering it, I'm going to push all that wool out this side, which is going to bring back all that excess wool coming out this side that we wanted because it's going to attach to the bunny. I'm taking it from the main ear because I felt like there was too much in the main ear and I'm pushing all that wool through there. Has less wool in it. Now if I take in the sides, it really is a lot faster and everything goes inward a lot easier. I still think it's too tall actually. I'm going to target the end of the ear. If you don't want to hold it like this with your fingers, that's okay, but I'm essentially just getting the top of the ear and going right downwards. You can pinch the side like this and just catch it and go downwards. And that's going to make the end of the air go down taking away a bit of the height as well. These are just some things you can do when you realize your project, it's too small, add more wool, it's too big, I'll take off a bit here, I'll need or felt it here, I'll manipulate the wool to go where you want it to go. In this exact scenario, when I realized that it was just too tall, I picked the end and I'm just need or felting it down and that's obviously going to take that wall, push it more towards the center, making it less tall. But if your ear was really firm and you couldn't really move around the wool as easily as I can here, you can also pull out a bit here as well, like the height. If you don't like the thickness, you can basically the same thing. You can either take in the sides by needle felting them more. That's going to compress them. But if it's already really compressed and it's not budging much, I like to just pick at the wool like this with my fingers and that's just going to literally take out more wool and that's going to compress it less. But I would say after you do that, the whole project is going to be a little bit softer, so you just want to needle felt it afterwards as well. That's going to finalize this new shape that you've created. I'm really happy with mine all around. I'm just going to stab the whole thing, again, avoiding this bit. Be a little bit tricky to avoid that excess fiber coming off of it because as soon as you stab it this way, you've got more this way, try to poke it in. It's coming up the other side, obviously, it's just how it works. I will sometimes needle felt it a bit of an angle so that they're not just going from one side to the other, it's staying into the center a little bit more, but honestly, that's just a minor thing and no one's going to see the other side anyway. As long as there isn't so much that's sticking out, I think we are done with creating the air. Let's attach. If your ear, it doesn't have that curved shape at the end, going for a rectangle and then it's curved at the end. If your ear doesn't have that, just going to grip it like this, hold it vertically, and it only takes a few stabs to go in at that corner, go in at that corner, and then you've got that nice curved shape. I'm just going to ad or felt that upper bit of the ear as well because I want it to taper the top a little bit. Awesome. If your ear is really thin that you haven't been able to make it solid, then just add more wool on top. I actually there's enough wool in my mat to use this. Just grab a bit of wool, lay it on top. Stab it in and that's good because you can't really make a solid if you don't have enough wool, so you can always add more. Awesome. I've just laid it on top of my bunny. Everything's looking good and I'm going to stay with this needle and obviously just take that slightly looser bit, the bit that's half been needle felted. As long as it's at the right height. Imagine you can't really change the position of the ear after this. I'm pinning it in position that I want it to be around here I think the eye is going to be in the middle of the side of the face. I want the ear to be just to the side of it. I'm just going to start going through the half felt bit of the ear and into the head. I've been staring at the top mostly and I'm just going to go at that diagonal bit around here, more to the side really. Because I've realized that I don't really want the ear to bounce up that much at the root of it. I'm going to stab at the side of the ear a little bit as well. I want it to be a little bit thinner actually, I'm still even though it's attached to the bunny, so it might be a little bit awkward, I sometimes use the side of the mat to get that angle or the side of the foam pad and then I'm just going to hold it here. I'm at the side of the ear and go inward. Just like we did before, it's going to make it thinner because you can't always estimate what it's going to look like on the bunny and you can make some adjustments afterwards. Even if you didn't like it at all, you could always just rip it off entirely. It might leave a little dip in the head and you can just add more roving wool on top of that of your color. If you want to, you can seal down the rest of the ear, which is what I'm going to do. If you're not, make sure this bit here is extra attached. Just a little bit because I don't want to compress it right into the head like I did at the root. Yeah, and then I'm going to do the next ear. I've just laid the two colors next to each other like this and then I'm just going to start needle felting it. Naturally, I want to overlap just a tiny bit. I haven't really needle filtered it a lot, but I'm just going to flip it over and this is really thick, so I'm just going to double it over this way to make it more the rectangular strip that we had last time. Nowhere near like this one, but that's okay. I just wanted to get started with this one and then it's still really squishy, so it can still shrink down to be like this one. What I'm going to do is start needle filtering these sides a lot more so that they go in. I'm going to leave about this much loose to attach. I can needle felt it a little bit and then I'm just going to make sure to avoid it a bit more than the rest. It's way too tall, so I'm just taking this top and needle filtering it in like this. Since it's so close to my fingers, I actually don't bring the needle all the way out. I just bring it out just enough so you can see that first barb of the needle. It's not all the way out. I'm just doing it repeatedly, and then I don't have to think about my fingers so much. It's the needles already in. It's not going to get me. That's just when I'm doing very particular things like say I thought that was sticking out a bit more than I wanted. I want that nice curve on the end. I'm just going to do that first stab and then I just go in and out like that. All right. I hope yours is going very well. If you don't like the fade here or even if it's a little bit slanted or whatever, you can always mix the two colors, take a little bit of this, take a little bit of this until it's a full mixture of the two and then just lay it on top where you want the fade to be and then you've got that middle color there. This is actually way too big. I've been needle felting it and it has shrunk down, but I think I overestimated how big I want it to be and that's all right. I want this side to be fluffy anyway, so I think I'm just going to pull at it like this. So I'm thinking about what part of this do I want to diminish if I wanted less of this color, I would pull it this color. If I wanted less of the brown, I could pull it here as well, which I think I will because I want it to be an even split in the middle. Obviously, if I said, I'm going to make it shorter and then I cut off this whole bit, I would just be left with this color. In this case, I felt like I had stabbed it enough where it wasn't going to compress anymore. I'm actually just pulling it out. Now I've taken out a bit of wool, but it's very loose after me pulling at it, so I need to stab it again. I'm going to go for even more of the sides. I'm going to lay it on top here, have a looking down view, see if the two ears are on the same level, which they are. I'm just going to hold it in the position and stab through the soft bit into the head. I'm also going into the mid ear a little bit because I don't mind if it's stuck to the head a little bit if it gives it a bit more support. It wouldn't fall off at this stage, but I just like to give them a pull test, but I like them to just be that extra mile of support. Even if I don't think it needs it, I will just stab it for another 30 seconds just because you don't know what this bunny is going to go through in its life. I've actually realized it's too tall, so I've just pinched the end of the ear and I'm going through the end of the ear and into the mid ear just to take it in a little bit. I don't only felt it this way. I also want to go in from a different angle, different angle, and then it will be fully attached. Now I'm just going to go over with my original color and then I'm just going to lay that on top and needle felt it down with my medium needle. I'm taking it into the ear as well. I just stab myself. It's actually fine. More the shock than anything. I'm just going to cut it off. A touch that. I just went across like that and you can see where the color changes there. A nice lovely little chocolaty eared mini lop. 10. Eyes: Now I'm just going to take this little bean that I rolled up. I'm going to roll it up even more because there's still some stray fluffs. I just roll it up between my fingers like this and this side is pure black. There's no other bits of fluff interfering. Now I'm going to take that same medium needle and just I've laid it on top. It wants to be right in the middle of the face. The ear is at the back third and the eye shouldn't be hidden by the air at all. You can poke the actual ear to make it thinner, or you can sometimes do this to move the root of the ear, or you can take it out and put it back again. But your eye should have a nice space there just to sit. I like to go directly directly downwards, not at an angle on the first few stabs. I'm just going to catch the eye and go through into the head. A few times. I'm thinking which bits are sticking up? Because this bit is sticking up quite a bit at the moment, so I'm going to try and catch that bit on the next stab, like so. This is actually bigger than it's meant to be, so I'm going to needle felt it down. It's only been a few stabs, but the e is still bigger than it's meant to be. I'm going to just take the center of it and push it even further down because we want the e to be um obviously really attached and in the face already? A little bit behind the face because you can see it from here, I want it to go even lower down. And we can see that it's shrinking already. If your eye is too small at this point, what you're going to do is just catch the outer bits of the eye and needle felt them to the side. To take a extreme example, if I took this bit and caught it in my needle like this, I can then take it this way and you can see it's been moved a bit here and if I take another bit of the eye, that's essentially going to move the whole eye. I'm not sure if you can see, but it is not where it's meant to be right now. I'm just going to take that out again. You can see the remnants of where it was. So I'm just unpicking that. I'm going to stab it back down. In that way, you can take a little bit of the eye, push it outwards. And if you do that all around it, it's going to get bigger. Although at the same time, you might have just picked up too much black wool, so you can always add more to make it bigger as well. I actually like to go for a big semicircle type shape. So I'm going to hook the corners of the eyes a little bit and just stab them down that way and then I'll go. But I don't want the whole eye to go that way. So what I'm doing is going to drag up the top again, and then I'm going to drag down the other side. You can see that this is what it looks like so far. You can see the eye, so it needs to go down a little bit more. I mostly needle felting around the sides at this point because I still want to shape it. I can see that this corner isn't exactly how I want it to be, so I'm going to drag it out a little bit more. After the first few stabs in the middle, I'm just angling it at the sides to make it go out. Or you could angle it at the sides the opposite way and make some of it go in. I really like this shape, honestly. It's nice and nestled in there, but I feel like it could still be just attached a little bit more. I'm going to take my tiny needle and go in there. That's why this needle is good because it's not going to really change the shape. It's not the most pure black. You can see some of the colors that are underneath it. So I'm going to take a little bit more black, and I'm just going around the shape of it. Stabbing it through the new black and into the sides of the eye. I've taken a little bit, maybe a little bit too much. I think that's too much. I like to make it slightly bigger than it should be. When I lay it on the face, that looks slightly too big, and I think that's going to be just right in the end. I'm laying it on the face and I'm not too worried about the shape. You can see it's not really a circle. It's more like a little strip, laying it down and I can stab right into the center and it'll all gravitate there. This bit sticking out a bit, so I'm going to stab that in. Already, I'm going to start evening out the shape. At this point, I like to look at it above and think, are they on the same level there? Maybe this one needs to go back a little bit. I'm just going to drag this corner to the bottom corner of this semicircle right there. And same for the other corner. A little bit triangular there, so I'm going to bring out this side a bit. Actually, I think I might take in the other side as well. Okay. Is it on the same level? Yes, it is. Although I'm noticing that that cheek is actually just smaller, so I'm going to need to fix that. But I think they're on the same level at this point. I'm going to take the smaller needle and just push it in a bit. I would try to make it more like a semicircle, but I think actually, it's going to start showing the fur underneath. So I'm going to grab a little bit more black. Because it looks like it needs to be bigger to match the other side. If you've ever drawn eyes and tried to make both look the same and felt the pain when they don't look the same, it's the same in felting. I really struggle to make the eyes look the same. It's like you just have to trial and error and poke a bit here, poke a bit there. This bit needs taking in, this bit looks like it needs to be bigger, so I'll add more, have to keep going. I think that looks good. M. 11. Fluffy Tail: They look so cute and the only step left is to add the lovely tails. Grab your white wool, roll it up into a ball. I think that's about right. A, I'm just going to grab my thickest needle. Needle filter into the mat a couple times. It's okay if it's a little bit flat because I'm just going to scoop it over like this. Actually, I think I'm just going to add a little bit more. Roll it up again so that it's in a little ball and then I'm going to take one side, needle filter in I needle filtering it in just at the base, sort of below, underneath the corner there. And then I'm going to take this needle. Now that I've secured it there, I'm going to take this needle. I think this one looks really cute already. If you wanted to, you can make it even more round by needle filtering the sides. But I'm just going to secure it in a little bit more by going up more to the corner area and just going through the tail into the body. I've got this little chunk here, and I'm going to start at the top and needle felt that in. I want it to mostly pop out of the top, so I'm going to keep needle felting there just a bit and then bring the rest over so that it blends out. There's a cute little tail, and it's really fluffy as well because it actually hasn't been needle filtered that much. I just like to take the bottom of it to secure it in and make sure it's flat along with the base of the bunny. With this one, I'm going to try and get it to connect to the tummy a little bit. I'm just going to add a little bit of more transparent white. It's not super thick and it's going to be more transparent. I'm just going to take this medium needle. And needle felt it up into the tail down back into the tummy. All right. I love it. It's adorable. It's nice and firm on there. If yours is looking a bit like it might fall off, I would recommend needle felting it more from the base and just all around really. You don't want to kill the fluf, but you can just needle felt it through the tail just a bit and you can always add more wool on top. I love it so much. I'm going to go around this bunny, just go in with this needle and needle felt literally everywhere. The A's, maybe sometimes the eyes, needle felt evenly around the whole body, and that makes the friz die down just a little bit. 12. Thank You! ღ: We freaking did it. Yes, I'm so proud of you for making it to the end and powering through on the struggles and the times where it got really fiddly. Now you have an adorable little bunny It's so cute. I made a few different ones. But I just want to say such a huge congratulations on doing it and showing up if your bunny is not like I don't know, for whatever reason, you don't like it or it's not the proportions of funny or something, you can definitely just attach a picture to a comment and I will be more than happy to help. I'll be able to tell you exactly the steps you need to do to fix it. I think sometimes just starting over can be really refreshing as well. I've made a video after this on how to correct anything basically because I don't get it right first try a lot of the time and it's just about identifying what went wrong and what needs to be edited. That's the good thing about needle clting. You just stab away at your problems. The other thing I was going to say is that if you wanted to reduce the friz a random is quite random, but whenever I send off an order beforehand, I actually iron it. I've heard some people say that they use a mini iron or something. I use a hair straightener and it really makes the frizz and also just needle felting it all around with a tiny little needle for your tiny buddy. I'm just going to show you one more time because so freaking cute. Huge role done on getting to the end of this course. Leave a comment below on any questions you have at all. Also let me know if there's any other course that you'd really like to see. I was thinking of making maybe a more advanced bunny, maybe an even simpler bunny. And if you can't tell I like bunnies, I can do other animals, though. So let me know and also be sure to follow me on Instagram because I post quite regularly on there and my YouTube channel also has some more thought process while needle felting time lapses sort thing. That can also help you a lot. Yeah, I hope this has been a good addition to your needle felting journey. Good luck on whatever your next project is. I hope this project went really well. Thank you so much for watching. Ah. If you would like anything bunny, I sell stuff on my Es shop, custom orders. This was based off of the litiga I have. So yeah, check it out. I have stuff on my Instagram if you'd like to see more. And yeah, thank you so much for watching. Goodbye.