Needle Felting For Beginners

1. Introduction ♡: Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for clicking on my course to be your intro into needle felting. I'm India. I've been needle felting for over a decade now, which is quite something considering I'm 18. I'm beyond excited to take you through your first project, which is going to be a little ball. We're going to add some color, add some design. You could string it up as a garland in the end, make lots of little colorful balls, string it up. It also would be great as a Christmas ball ball. But most of all, it's just a really nice starter project. I'm going to be telling you all of the basics, everything I know, the techniques that I use every day when I need or felt, and by the end, you'll be completely confident in need or felting. Let's get in to some of the materials that we're going to be using. Excited to take you through your first projects. I'm going to be showing 2. Materials: Wool and Mats ⟡: Let's get into some of the materials that we're going to be using. This is coral, two different types of wool, This is coral. This is roving wool right here. You can see this one's obviously a lot more polished. This one is stuffing, basically. That's how I think of it. When I'm making my little bunnies, underneath this color, I use this. It only comes in this color. It's very cheap. That's why I use it for what you won't see underneath all of the pretty colors. We're going to be sculpting our ball with this really fluffy corbol. So once we've made our cute little ball, you can absolutely make it bigger than this. This is actually the first thing that I ever made. And we're going to go from this. This is pure cool. We're going to slap on some color like so and voila. You'll have at the end any. You're going to get roving wool in whatever color you want your ball to be. I've added some little decor spirals as you can see, if you want to add anything to your circle, I will absolutely take you through that. You can get multiple colors of roving wool if you want. But for now, we just need, roving wool, two walls. Then sorry, I'm getting excited. You're going to need a felting map. As for mats, I use this one. It's been a really, really good investment. But as a beginner, I use these kind of polystyrene I'm going to put some information about them wherever I can. Maybe if there's a place I can put links, I will, but they're on screen now. 3. Materials: Needles and More ⟡: Let's get into some of the materials that we're going to be using. The gauge of a needle refers to how thick it is. I've only ever used needles from around 32 to 40 gauge. That's the range that most needles are. The smaller the number, the thicker the needle. This needle is a 36 gauge, so it's a little bit on the thicker side, whereas this one is a 38 gauge. Ticker needles are better for bulkier work and thinner needles are better for details. We're going to use a thicker needle to sculpt the cor wall. I'm not going to get into the shape of needles on this course, but if you need to know what to buy, this is a 38 spiral, and this is a 36 triangular needle. I get my needles from Heidi feathers. I really like their needle guide. So if you buy your needles from them too, these are the only two needles that I'm going to be using throughout the whole project. As for using the needles, I just like to use them as they are, I just hold them like this and start stabbing. You can also put a little bit of tape on them to give you something more to grip. Now, as a beginner, I really liked this pen. You unscrew it and slot up to three needles in there, and then I used to hold it like a pencil. I find it's way easier to grip. Similar to it is this. You can take this wooden bit out, slot the needle in this way and there's your pen. There are countless other tools that you can use. Some people even tie their needles together with a bit of tape and use that as a way to use multiple needles at once. But we're just going to be using one needle at a time, starting with the 36 gauge. Lastly, we have finger pads for obvious reasons. If you really don't feel confident that you can have your fingers anywhere near your project while stabbing, highly recommend these. I personally don't use them just because I like to be able to feel my project, and that way I can feel if there's any dips in it or if something needs smoothing out, but it's completely up to you. Hi. I wanted to add a few things that you could add to your bauble that you need more materials for. So this is like the finished result. I mean, you can put anything on the bauble that you want, really. I did. This was my first project ever, some spirals on it. But anyway, if you want to make yours into a bouble, this is what you'll need to do so. You can see I've added this lovely gold ribbon and a sorry a bead. Those two are optional. You can absolutely string up your bauble with just some thread. And then you can hang that wherever you want. Then optionally, you can do it with a ribbon. I have two separate videos for those. One, if you want to use a ribbon and one if you just want to use thread. I think in the ribbon one, I show how to add this cute little bauble. That's what you'll need for that. Then I also thought these just make such cute little decorations, charms. You can even put it on a key ring. The options are endless. Garland includes this decoration, whatever you want to call it. I was also thinking you could do some bunting, which I also show how to do. So for this, if you're doing, obviously, bunting across a wall, you're going to need more. They don't have to be close together. But yeah, just think about how many little balls you might need. In my case, I just wanted to make something simple, so I only did three. So yeah, this is everything you would need for this. Okay, I hope that was helpful. I'll see you in the next episode. 4. Starting Out: Right, I'm so glad you could make it for our very first needle felt. This is what we're aiming for. I have about this much core wool. How we get from this to this is the more you poke at it with your needle, the more the fibers get matted and knotted together, and the more the wool just shrinks and as it's getting smaller and smaller, it's getting firmer and firmer until you're left with something that's more solid. I like my bunnies to be really firm because I find that it's easier to put on the color the firmer your project is. Some people like their finished projects to be a lot looser. Obviously, if you pinch it, it's very squishy. It's all just a spectrum from this to this and you get to decide when to stop. We have our needle. If we get stabbing like this, you can see each fiber is very far apart because of how area it is. We're not getting as many of the fibers at once as we could. This is why I like to roll up my projects at the start, making it as firm as possible. I started by just laying out. It doesn't have to be too flat. You start at one end and you start pinching it and turning it. Pinching it and turning it. Now we're going to fold over the edges like this. Then we have a very tight bit of cor wool. The tighter it is, the faster it's going to be as you need or help because as you're stabbing, you'll be catching more of the fibers and getting your job done more efficiently. Any way that you get your core wool to be really tight is good. I just fold mine as many times as I possibly can. Because it's really firm right now, this gives you an idea of how big it will be in the final project. It looks like we're going to have to add more cool on top. Now to actually start stabbing our project. You can see I'm gripping it very hard with my fingers because otherwise it's going to bounce up, but if you want it, you can pin it down with a needle like that just to keep your fingers out of the way. But we're going to take our 36 gauge needle. And just start poking it like this. I have two pieces of advice to share with you that I learned the hard way. Number one is you don't want to put your needle in and then twist it. Let's say I jerked my needle that way, it would probably break. You want to be going in and then out the same way you came. In other words, don't change the angle when you're in your project. That is how you break needles, and I've been doing this for years. It still happens, but you can still minimize that risk. Advice number two is that the way needle felting works is you can see these dips in the needle, they're called barbs. When you actually needle felt, the barbs are what are going to catch the fibers and push them inwards. That's what makes them different from normal needles and that's why needle felting works. You don't need to be pushing your needle like all the way here through your project. I only go about maybe 2 centimeters into it because once I'm past this point, I just need to push the fibers in a bit and then I can bring my needle out. Quite lightly, really, stabbing the wall like this. I can see mines popped back up again. I'm just going to k fold it over. And now I'm going to stab it and I'll have to hold it less and less because the wool is going to hold itself soon. We are just stabbing and stabbing. I'm going in around to where the barbs end and I just push it a tiny bit more. Then that force into it. If I went anymore, I think it would be quite easy and I wouldn't be getting anywhere. That's when I just take my needle out and stab again. I do my best to keep it rolled up, but even if it's completely bounced up, it'll just take a bit longer and that's fine. Poking and poking away at it and it's going to be getting firmer and firmer. I've been poking a lot in the middle and that's why this is very loose and you can see the holes there where I've poked it, this is getting a bit firmer, just the middle. That's why I'm just going to pull in the sides a bit. Here, I'm just going to pin it with my finger. Maybe I'll pin it with the needle, actually keep my fingers safe. Now, I'm just going to pick it up and see what shape it is. This is quite flat right now. I'm just going to fold this chunk over and if I need or felt it into the main the main load of it, you can see it stayed down and that's made my project more circular. I'm just looking at the shape and thinking, how can I make this more of a sphere? I think if this bit was cut off, life would be better. If I stab it a lot, it's going to shrink down and that's exactly what's going to make the shape better. Be careful when you're doing things like this that you're poking and it's not going to hit your finger or something like that. Advice number three that relates to this is that the wool will go where you felt it. Let's say I took this bit here and I was felting it upwards like this, I would get more wool around here. Whereas if I filtered it down like that, you can see all of that wool is just going inwards. Basically, the wool will go in the direction or the angle that your needle is pointing, which is quite intuitive, but you can definitely use that to your advantage because I've spotted a dip here and I'm going as I'm felting this, I'm going to be pointing into that dip. That means that more wool will go there and it'll get patched up. The way I rolled it, there's still a dip there, and I think I need more co wool anyway. I'm just going to take a tiny bit, roll it in between my fingers and put it right there and just start attaching it. That's the beauty of needle felting. You can always grab more wool, put it where you want it to be, and then as you stab into it, it'll attach itself into your project. I'm not just poking it here for too long, I'm going to change my angle and start poking here and then go the other way. It just helps to even it out. I have been ignoring this very loose bit, so I'm going to start to do that now. The bigger the needle, the more force you're going to need to push it through your project. But that's why we use it when our project is just a cloud of loose cow basically because you don't need force to go through this because although the needle is really big, the fact that this is mostly it's not very firm yet means it's not that difficult to push your needle through. 5. Finishing the Base Sphere: Awesome. This does not look smooth at all, and I'm okay with that. Your project absolutely doesn't need to be a perfect sphere yet. I'm just looking at it and thinking, maybe it's a little bit too small, by the way, you can make your sphere as big as as big as you want it to be. So for me personally, I'm just going to take a load more cool. I think maybe this is a bit of a mess, so I'm just going to yank a bit off and I tease it a little bit with my fingers just to find a bit that is pure corol because I don't want to be attaching this tiny bit onto my project. I want quite a solid bit of cool to just lay on top of my project and then I'll start attaching it. So this bit is fully attached already. I can always pull it off. You can see where it's attached here, but I can literally just yank it off if I wanted to, which I have. Let me reattach that now. You can see all of that new stuff and, you know, my OG project. I'm not going to felt this on its own because I find it's a lot harder to attach two firm things together than it is to just layer on new wool that's very loose. I'm just going to bring that round here. I know that this is not attached, so I'm just going to go here. And it only takes a few stabs for it to not be bouncing up. That bits done in my mind. I'm just going to go on to the next area. Once again, if I were to start poking at this, you can see I'm not really getting much of the fibers and it has nothing to attach to yet. Whereas if I just grab a load of it and I sometimes twist it as well. That really helps to get it all really close together, and then I'm just going to bring it over here and you can see that it's now a lot closer to our project, so it's going to be attached a lot easier. You can even hear the difference in sounds between that and this. This is just doing more. This bits quite loose, so I'm just going to smooth that down. I'm going to think about if there's any dips in the sphere, which I think there are others here just because I don't think you'll be able to see where the dips are, but this bit is very squishy compared to this bit. I just know that by feeling it. I'm just going to put that over here, which will help to even it out. This is my sphere so far. This is what we're going for. You can definitely stop here. I'm going to stab it a bit more because I think this one has a bit of a cleaner finish, which you get by just stabbing it more. 6. Adding Colour: Hi, welcome. I'm so proud of you for getting this far. This is our ball right now. This is the one I originally made. You can see it's a little bit less fluffy. That's because I stabbed this one a lot more. So it's a little bit firmer on the outside. I find that that gives it a bit more grip when you add your color. I so let's add our color. All right. You have your roving wool color of choice. Maybe you have two, even three. This is the base. We're going to be covering all of the ball in this one color. Maybe you have two colors. The second one being the one that you're going to put a pattern on top with. My second color is going to be green because I'm going to do a tiny little Christmas tree on it. So let's get started. If you pull it off really hard, it doesn't work very well as opposed to just going a bit looser. It's really hard to yank off. I will just split it apart this way just to loosen it a bit and then it should come off in chunks quite easily that start with about this much for now. We're going to layer it on top. It doesn't need to be super thick like that. Basically just so that you can't see the core wool underneath. This, I've spread it out a little bit. It's quite thin but not so thin that you can see underneath. I'm just going to layer it on top, get our 38 gauge needle and just start lightly stabbing it like that. It's very simple. We're just going to go round the whole thing. We'll need a bit more wool than this, stabbing it evenly around. I've done this circle here. I'm just going to move on to below it. The great thing is that you can see where you've done because there's some holes there. Right now, there's really no point in pushing our needle the whole way through. I am going to about here and then backing out. Because if I really push it all the way through, that almost creates a clump of wool going inwards, which is not what we want. We just want it to sit nicely on top. We don't want it to all get pushed inwards because that's just going to lose our pretty wool. And it's going to reveal more of the coal underneath. We just want to be quite light with it, still attaching it so you can see these holes where I've stabbed my needle through, but it doesn't need to be super forceful. I could also use my 36 gauge needle for this. It seems to work. But I think you can just see the holes a bit more. I prefer using a finer needle for this. This is what it's looking like right now. Obviously, I need to do a bit more. I'm just going to bring that over here, bring that this way, and then I'll fill in this bit and this bit. Obviously, the amount of wool that I pulled off wasn't enough. I do always like to start with less rather than having these bits hanging around. But now I've got this, so I'm going to attach it. I've got this bit which I could put here, but I've already done this patch, so I'm just going to guide it back around. I have a gap here, so I've just rolled up this little piece of red wool and I'm going to poke that down. Rather than just stabbing it like that because although it works, it still jumps up a bit. It is just faster to smooth it over. I'll be holding onto a tiny bit of this fiber. Now it's really quite fast to attach when I poke at it. Then I'll just get those fibers that I'm holding onto there. I feel like the shape as a whole could be a lot smoother. I'm going to find the bits that are sticking out a bit and just stab them more because that will make them sit down a little bit more, which will even out the circle as a whole. If your sphere is uneven like mine, it's likely that you just need to do a bit of an all rounder because some bits won't have been felted as much as others. So if you go round the whole thing, you can see where the loose bits are, maybe poke them a bit more, and then it'll start to look more smooth. 7. Adding Decor: Dots .°⋆.: So let's add whatever pattern you want to add onto your bubble. I'm really excited for this. I've gone with the classic Christmas colors, so I'm just going to get some of this straight away. I'm going to cover some of the classic patterns, and I'll share with you a bunch of techniques that I've used in the past. So hopefully that gives you a framework to do whatever your heart desires, whether it's a smiley face or, you know, your pet, whatever you want. You could wind it round to make a circle, but I just like to roll it in between my fingers like that. It doesn't have to be a perfect circle, make it a little bit more compact. If you have any tiny pins, you can use that or you can use a big needle, I suppose, and just put that in there so that your hands your fingers don't get so involved. Now we're just going to start cementing it in. Obviously, we want it to be a circle. Like with this bit poking out, I'm just going to take it with the end of my needle. And it'll follow it as I pull it inwards. I'm going to keep using that technique. I'm taking the flyaways and just tucking them in with my needle and then poking them inwards. That will give these little circles that are going to be dotted everywhere a bit of a cleaner finish. There we go. There is our dot. If you want it to lay flat with the rest of the babel, you can see it's a little bit got a bit of a ridge. I think you just need to felt it even more. I am really happy with that. I think it sits nicely on top, but if you wanted to make it sit even nicer, I would recommend an even thinner needle, especially a crown needle. So I think I mentioned that needles have barbs in them that catch the wall and push them wherever your needle is going. On a crown needle, the barbs are only at the tip of the needle. It's very fine work, very detail oriented these needles. I wouldn't say you need a crown needle for this project, but for the really polished look at the end, it's great. That is now lying flat. You can add way more all around the bauble. I'm going to pull this off. To explore some different patterns. Just a note about attaching things and removing them. Quite often, it will create a dip in your project. That's because if I stabbed it like this, the wool naturally will go down a bit. That's why it works to smooth out the circle because if there's any bit poking out, you'll just push it down into the project. While I'm attaching things, I'm poking into the project and the same thing is happening all around what I'm attaching is just going to dip down a bit. That's why sometimes if I were to yank this out having attached it, there might be a little dip in the project. To add another layer. If your project is really firm like this one, this is the firmer version of the bauble. I won't create as much of a dip. The bauble that had a looser base, if I attach something, then ripped it out, there would be a bigger dip than if I did the same with the firmable. Oh 8. Adding Decor: Stripes .°⋆.: Let's add some stripes. I'm going to obviously leave it like a strip here, lay it on top. I think that's already a very clean line, so I'm just going to start poking it in right away. I want it to go all the way around, so I'm still bringing this around, but I'm noticing that it's thinning out here. You can see it was very thick here. This bit of wool is going that way, that bit of wool is going to go that way. I'm just going to do one at a time. I'm just going to attach this one. It only takes a few stabs to attach something, something thin like this. Then I layer the other one. Get that. Sometimes if there's a bunch of flyaways here, what I'll do is I'll just wrap around my needle until it's in one thin line. I'm not sure if you can see that, but it was a whole bundle of fluff there as I'm doing that, takes a few seconds, but then it starts to twist itself around my needle and I can use that to just stab it in. No more flyways. There is our stripe. It's very uneven. In fact, I think this bit is a bit too thick, so I'm actually going to take a little bit off and I'm going to put it at the thinner end, so. There's a little bit of a dip there, so I'm just going to push that in to patch it up because I don't often get things perfect the first try, but that's what I like about needle felting. You can always just add. It's sometimes a little bit tricky to take away. For example, if I wanted to change the shape of this bunny, Oh my gosh. It's very firm right now, it would be quite hard to pull out the call, but I can always add things. I'm just tucking in all that excess stuff. There we go. I'm going to add some more, but just to show you how you would do some thinner ones, I'll do that as well. I have my thin little strip here. Because it's quite curved, I can't really pin it down like that if I want it to wrap around. The first thing I'm going to do is just attach it right here. I want it to be thinner than this one. It's going to get thinner and thinner as it goes up. So we have this bit attached. Although if I pin it down, it strains out a bit. I have this bit here and I think I'm just going to twisting the wool like this. Then I hold it down and stab it like this. If I were to just start stabbing it, it might go up a bit. That's just its natural tendency because I'm working on a sphere. As I stab, I'm just going to make sure I catch this bit in the tip of my needle and go down a little bit. That's just how I keep it on track. I'm just going to start twisting the wool. Like so. Then it's quite hard to hold it all down at once. So if you have at least one point in place, just put a few stabs there and it should stay and then I can start moving it around like that. I just need the tiny bit of wool to go here. Okay. I'm just going to roll up this bit. I know I want it to wrap around in a tiny little circle, so I'm going to pin that down here and then drag it over. Things like this can get very fiddly. I'm just going to wrap that up to make it more straight. Even though this is really fuzzy, when you poke it down like this, it really does straighten out, which also makes it hard to do a circle because you can imagine if I straighten it, it's just going to go going to be in the straightest line it can be. That's why I have to poke it at every turning point, like that. That went very straight across, but I want it to be curved. I'm just going to bring that out right here and poke it down. That looks a bit more like a circle. Tu up. I don't think it would be right without a tiny little.in the middle. If you poke something this hard, sorry, if I were to jab right in the center of this circle, it would probably go right into the center of the project never to be seen again. I'm very careful with little details that are as small as this. I'll even use my crown needle. I think that would be better. I don't jab my needle hard in the center of it. I just I make sure to bring it out a little bit like this and then I poke it at the side. So that it has multiple I almost think of it like it has multiple grips in the project around the sides of the dot because if you make one really big hole in it, it's going to fall through that hole. I hope that makes sense. This is my Christmas themed bauble. I think I'm going to leave this side, but if you wanted, you could do the other side as well. I think it's a really lovely striker curtain. 9. Adding Decor: Smiley Face .°⋆.: Okay, for this one, I'm going to add a smiley face. I'm just going to roll this up straight off the back because I don't want to deal with all the frizz. I'm just twisting it one way. Obviously, if you go like that with both your hands, it's not going to work, you want to put some resistance by twisting that way on your left hand and the other way on your right hand. Then obviously it's a circle, doesn't matter where I put it. This is going to be the smile. The more you tighten it, the thinner the line will be and I've just loosened it a little bit so that it's a bit thicker. I'm going to start carving out I think I'm just starting off with a nice big curve. I think maybe if it was like that, that would be awesome. I'm going to finish it there and I'm going to go up with the other side. I'll just start by securing it in the final position and then I know that I've got my smile just needs adjusting along the way. Like that. It's wonky, so I'm going to push that bit about that way. Because like I said before, where you're pointing your needle matters, if I was pointing it, obviously I was pointing it that way, it would go that way and even if I'm pointing it down, it's not going to move it anywhere. Especially, you can see a bit of coral poking out because I went out like that. I'm actually just going to push that back in. Nobody wants to see that. Okay, I want my smiles to end here. Unless I needed more thickness along here, I would bring it back down and around, but I don't. I think I'm just going to cut these off. Some normal craft scissors. I'm snipping it right at the base like that. If there's noticeable wool there that's been cut off, it might be a little bit hard to catch it, but you just have to poke at it. Especially a tip for that is putting your hook and angle when stabbing it. Instead of going like that, going like this or this will catch more of the fibers. Right. Let's put in the eyes. Maybe I should get some black. Oh, my God, that looks creepy. Looks like the Grinch actually. I've got some brown. Hopefully it will look more like eyes. And I might just put them. I just pick it up like that so that I'm not fiddling around and then my fingers are in the way. If I have it on my hook, it will usually and I take it around like that, I can put it in exactly the place I want it and just stab it there and then. I think that's good. Because there's a lot of it, I can just stab into the middle and I don't think it will fall through. It creates that nice circle shape. Again, you can roll it in your fingers. You don't want too much, especially with two D things. I usually don't think about how much it'll shrink. I just think what is the exact amount that it looks like I will need? If I wanted to make a two D circle out of this, would I have enough? The answer is yes, I think this is about right. But you can always add more. I'm just going to push piece that on there. Take my needle. And poke that in there. If your eye looks like that, you can see there's a lot coming up. You just want to poke it a bit more and as you are, this is a great opportunity to shape it. This bits just sticking up ever so slightly so that it would look odd. I'm just taking it and just ever so slightly bringing it inwards closer to the center of this dot. Awesome. And there you have it your smiley face. I actually think this looks really creepy, so I'm going to rip it out, ripping out its eyes. There's a little bit of a fluff there leftover. You can either poke it back in because that's coral, so I'm just going to poke that back in. But if there was a bit of black left, I might pick it out. But yeah, there was your smile. I hope yours looks less creepy if you're keeping it. 10. Adding Decor: Christmas Tree .°⋆.: I want to put a Christmas tree on there, little triangular thing. Maybe I'll put some yellow right at the top as a star. So I have two options when putting on a pattern. Do I want it to sit on the same level as the base coat? Because I would get loose wool just like we've been doing, and start poking it on there. Loose wool is moldable, easy to attach, and easy to integrate in. I I saw that this bit had a bit of a dip, I might add more red wool as I'm attaching it, you can see that you can barely even tell it was new, if I stab it even a little more, you can barely even tell that it was placed on there. Contrasted too, if I were to take this loose red roving wool and I molded it separately. It doesn't sit as well, essentially. The firmer the wool, the harder it is to attach, the less moldable it is and the less it will be integrated. I stabbed it less than the other thing, but you can tell it's always going to be sticking up a little bit. If I stabbed it more, that might create more of a dent in my project as well. Having said that background information, I want my Christmas tree to really just be integrated into my project, you can see it's very flat here, or if I want it to sit on top and have some bulk. So this goes for anything. If you wanted the eyes on your smiley face to really pop and to be not to D, you wanted them to be raised. You can use the technique I'm about to share. But let's say that I want my Christmas tree to just be flat with the pattern. You get some loose wool, might put that closer to the project, so I can see what I'm doing. I'm going to bring that out here for a spike. This is your chance to really mold it. Say I wanted this wall to be here, a few stabs, and that is done. Say I wanted to really create a spike coming out there. I would hold this down with my finger so that it doesn't all go over there. I'm holding it, I'm pinning it in some places that I also wanted it to be. I take this and I really just drag it that way, poke. I could take some more, drag it and poke it down and you can see I've made that spike there. Which actually, I'm going to do in a very miniature way just to shape out the Christmas tree. I want these lower what do they call pines to be sticking out either side a lot more. Something I do is I just I gently pull at it with my needle like that and that brings more wool out that way that I can then use to extend my two D project. I think I've shaped that to my heart's content. You can see this side is a little bit flatter and that's making these bits look like they're sticking out a bit more. Just to compensate for that, I'm going to needle felt around the project just as much as I've been needle felting the project itself. Then I'm just going to take the smallest amount of yellow. I've got a little bit more yellow than I want to show up on there because if I did it about half this size, I think it might disappear a little bit. Whereas with this amount, I can just product to my heart's content and it probably won't slip through. I'm going in with my thinner needle because I feel like now's the time. I'm just dragging in these bits in a cross formation. I would take this bit and just go inward like that. Then for these bits, I'd be going outward. And that has made it into somewhat of a cross, and there is my two D Christmas tree. Now let's say I wanted it to be sitting above the surface, even like this thick on top of the bauble. I'm going to go to the other side. Just a tip to think about where if you want it to be a buble or even you want to string it up in some way. Think about where you want the string to be going in. I know the top is going to be here, so I know that I need to make the other Christmas tree along this line somewhere. I've just marked that with this needle. Like I said, the firmer, the wool, the less it's going to integrate itself into the project or the bauble. That's what we want. I want to put my Christmas tree on it around here and I don't want it to sink in. I want it to stand out. I've got quite a lot and I'm going to make this green wool really firm into the shape of the Christmas tree before I've put it on. That's why I'm on this different color just so I don't have this bright green showing up on my light side. Because as you're felting, just like when you're attaching, as I'm felting straight onto the mat, it works the same as when I'm attaching things. You can see it's gone in the direction of the needle which is into the mat. If we want our Christmas tree to be firm, when we put it on the bauble, we're not going to be able to shape it after that. That's it. I need to make this green wool into the shape of a Christmas tree. Now, you can see I've just pinned it down and I've started stabbing it. A little bit here already. I'm just thinking, how can I make this into the shape I want to make it? For me, what I need to do, if this is the base of it, then this will need to just go upward a bit. I'm really firming it up and it won't really attach to the mat, I can just pull it out. I'm just getting whatever loose wall there is and you can push it straight into the mat and that will make it firm. You can push it into the project. Let's say I wanted to tuck in this bit, I would just take it and stab it that way. I think this Christmas tree is a little bit too tall for my liking. So I wouldn't do this when your project is really foamed up, but because it's still in the creation stage, I'm just going to flip that over on here. When I'm making new things from scratch, I'll usually use corbll but because this is so thin, it's basically just the top layer like I don't really need to. I've made this into a triangle just by holding this down, stabbing this, then I can bring it up, stab there, bring it back down. If you do that over about 10 minutes, you will get this. I think mine is a little bit frayed at the edges though. Actually, I'm just going to go on to the light side so that you can see. I think it's a bit frayed at the edges and I'm just going to get a little bit of wool and put it onto the edge. Even if I'm partly stabbing it into the mat, it's still going to catch some of the project and attach itself. If you have finger pads on right now, I would encourage you to just take them off for a second and just feel how thick it is. There's a huge dip in the middle and this side and I can feel that just from holding it. Then I know where to pick up some green wool and lay it on top of there. Since we were starting from the roving wool as it is, I started with the 36 gauge, so the thicker one. But now that it's a little bit more formed and I'm more refining it now, I'm going to move on to the 38 gauge. Part of the reason there are so many dips is because this one, it will clump the wool up together really fast, which is good if you're starting from scratch. But now I'm more looking to make it smooth, so I'm going to use the thinner one. If you're not happy with your edges, let's say they're lacking a bit like there's a dip here, what I would do is again, just attach more wool to that. Because I feel like they could do with being shaven down a little bit at the sides. I'm going to take my thicker needle and just poke into that side a little bit. Obviously, I was very close with my fingers there. That takes a lot of practice, I wouldn't recommend it straight away. You can hold it at the end and jab it like that. Just to give it a little bit more shape, I'm just going to go in on certain parts of the side and create that in and out Christmas tree zigzag shape. That's okay. I think I'm happy with that so far. It's my little Christmas tree. I just kept a note of where I wanted to put it with this needle. Anyway, enough of me yapping. I'm going to just make sure it's lined up and get attaching. Obviously, the thicker it is, the thicker it will lie on your bubble and it's going to just go in a little bit anyway just because you're stabbing it so much. I feel like this bit is dipping out, so as I attach this bit, I'm not going to go straight down. I'm just going to go that way a little bit. I feel like the top is really thin and could do it just going down a bit anyway. I'm just going to push my needle straight into the project. That will help both go downwards a bit because that's the way my needles pointing and also because the wool is going to be clumped together a bit more, it's going to be thicker. I'm always thinking, what will that do to it as a whole? It's going to make it firmer? Do I want that? Do I want any of the proportions to change? Make any edits to the shape of it? Because it's quite hard to undo how firm it is. Before it gets really hard, that's your chance to mold it. That's my Christmas tree. This is the flat one and this is the bulky one. I think it's going to look great once I add the tree trunk, the star, and I think I'm going to add some baubles as well. I'm just going to roll this up. I'm just going to shape this tree trunk a little bit. I don't think it really matters the shape. That's why I'm just stabbing it like a crazy person because then you can take this random bit of matted wool and fold it over. If it's a shape like a tree trunk, you can just fold it and get that effect. I'm going to attach it partly into the tree and then the rest of it obviously straight onto the bauble. I made it half firm on the mat and then the other half I'm going to use to really change the shape as I'm attaching it. It's a little bit too thick for my liking, rather than attaching it like that, I'm going to go in at the sides and not really point it sideways because I don't think that will help. I'm just going to point it sideways and a little bit down. It's also being attached. There's my little tree trunk. I'm just rolling up a tiny bit of colored wool. I think this one has been stabbed a few times. But you can put it in if it's completely loose or even if you've made a tiny little circle as it is, away from your project and then you stick it on, I think it'll work either way. Know that if it's very hard to begin with, it will need a few more stabs to really attach itself. I was going to do multicolor, but I really like the look of this light blue. I'm just adding more and more on varying sizes. If I wanted, that's disappeared a little bit. If it half sinks in so much that you can't see it, if you can, just grab it and pull it out a tiny bit and then poke that stuffing that you got a tiny distance away from where it fell through. It's a bit like sewing. You don't want to go back through that same hole that you just pulled your thread through. You want to go a small distance away. Now I have my yellow wool. I'm thinking do I want to do it just a ball or do I want it to have shape? I think it might be a little bit too small to do five points. Tried to do a cross like I did on this side, but it hasn't worked. I'm going to try it again. Hopefully I can let you know what went wrong if I can make it successfully into a star this time. Okay, so I've made my cross, but I think the reason why it didn't work before is because I had to do it half on the tree, half off. Okay. Here is my tiny little star. I think it's quite adorable, although it does have a few other colors mixed into it. I think because it's so tiny, it's just going to pick up the smallest fibers that are already on my mats. All right. This is my finished Christmas tree. You can see it's a lot bulkier than this one. I also think this one has lost a little bit of its color just because it's really being merged in with the red that the red is showing through. I'd have to add a little bit more green on top if I was very passionate about that. But I'm really happy about this for now. I think in the future, I would make the bubble bigger so that the tree isn't sewing like that on it. But yeah, let's string it up. I hope that answered all your questions about adding color to the ball and adding some patterns to it, some decorations. It's really fun to do, especially if you want to give it as a gift to someone. If I didn't cover anything that you really wanted to make or you just need some guidance on something, feel free to go into the comments of this course and ask away. I'll be more than happy to. 11. Stringing It Up as a Bauble ౨ৎ: Hi people. Apologies for the low lighting, but let's get started. I have my small needle here and I thought that this silver thread would be great as something to just string up this bauble. I think I'm going to put it right here. I think my end is a bit frayed and I need to get it through my needle, so I'm just going to snip that off. Just to say, I have woven embroidery thread through my filter projects. It really does handle any kind of thread, really. But if your thread is something like this and maybe it's not going through, then I encourage you to just treat it like it's a ribbon and go ahead and watch the next video. Very fiddly. I'm just going to thread that through my needle. At this end here, I'm going to make it relatively short. So what I'm going to be doing is securing my thread, then leaving a lot of space for the loop and then going back in and securing it. It doesn't really matter where you secure it. I'm going to just do it very close to the middle. I'm going to go in and out. I want to use quite a lot of this thread because my loop is going to be relatively big. I've just tugged a lot of that out. It's going in here out here, same again in and out. I can just pull that tight. I like to do it three times just to be sure in and out. This time when you go out, think about where your loop is going to start. Go out in the exact place that your loop is going to be. I'm pulling it out here. We don't want any loop just yet. When we cut our end now, I think that will be nicely secured in there. Now I'm just going to go right back in it doesn't really matter where your needle comes out. Now before pulling it all the way back, just size up what is going to be your loop. See, it does get a little bit twisted, but it does the job. I'm going to have mine be a tiny bit shorter around like this, I'm very happy with that. Now I'm going to do my last three securing stitches. I'm going to go in and and back through. I've tried to do it someplace where you can't really see the thread. I'm just going to do an extra one for good luck. I have to say I'm very proud of my little loop. If I tug it, there's not really much movement. Actually, I think that dot might have not been the best placement, so I'm just going to felt that down. But the ends aren't slipping away. There's no more thread coming through if I pull it. That tells me that I can cut my ends. So you can see one coming out here. Just cut that and I can see one right here. If there's anything poking out that you don't want to poke out, I usually grab my needle and just try and poke it back in. I'm just going to go in at an angle and poke that back down. 12. Adding a Ribbon ౨ৎ: So if you are here to attach your lovely ribbon to your lovely ball, let's get into it. Hi, everyone. I hope you like this flower head starting to get its first flowers ever. It's blooming. Very excited about that. Anyway, if you want to attach a ribbon to your bauble, we are going to need scissors, ale, any needle will do an embroidery needle, anything as long as it fits your most unnoticeable thread. Then we have our ribbon. So what we're going to do is we're going to attach our thin thread, and then we're going to create a little loop with it, and then we're going to attach it again and cut our ends. Then you're going to take the ribbon and just thread it through that little loop that you made with the white thread. You want yours to be longer than this because you're going to thread it through, and then you can maybe tie a bow on the top or just an ordinary knot, which I'll also show you how to do if you don't know. Let's start with the first things first. Take your mini thread. And oh, my God, first, try it out. Okay, never mind. You can cut it with your scissors to get a cleaner end, which will help you to slot it through. Just an extra note. If you don't think that you're going to like the look of making a knot to secure your ribbon or even putting a bow on the knot. If you just don't think that's going to look good, then what you can do is you can either put some sewing there to secure it or you can use that sewing there, and then bring it onto your bauble and just secure it with some stitches straight onto the bauble. In my opinion, this way is the easiest and I didn't want to make it confusing with a bunch of different options, we are just going to create a tiny little loop with our white thread. You've threaded your needle. Make sure the other end is coming out about this much so that you don't think it will fall out so that you don't just have two bits of string the whole way through. We're going to find somewhere close to the center and just go in and out a few times. Now, you don't have to pull obviously don't pull the end of the string all the way out. Just do it, damn it. But yeah, just do it so there's about as much string as you think you'll need. A really good way that I sometimes use to attach the string and really make sure it's not going to slip out is it's quite difficult with a smaller needle. But if you just go the whole way through the bauble or actually because this needles quite small, I'm just going to go diagonally a bit. Pull it through. This is a really good way to make sure that the string isn't going to fall out. I'm going to try and make this bit as invisible as possible by going back in as close to the original where the string came out. Around here. And you can barely see where the string was attached there. So this one is my end. I don't have to worry about that for now because I think that my thread is fully secured because if I pull this, this isn't slipping through. So that's how I tell. Now we want to go over and up and then secure it around here. I'm just going to go straight in here and I'll poke it out one side. If your needle is a little bit smaller than the object itself, you can squish it and then that helps to get it out. But if you can't get your needle out, then you can always pull on your thread. Great. So I'm going to pull until this tiny loop is around. I want it to be very small, honestly. I think that's the top on this side, but not the top on this side, so I probably should have thought about where I was placing my Christmas trees, but oh, well, I'm going to it really only needs to be about this tall. In fact, I might just tighten it while the ribbon is over it. If I pull this needle, that tightens, which tells me that I need to secure it a little bit more now that I've got the right size. As long as you go back in very close to where you came out, it really doesn't show. Again, I'm just going to go right in there. I know it looks a little bit confusing. This is the end of my string that I don't have to worry about. I'm just going to cut it off. This is my ribbon that I'm going to secure at the top. Now this is my last end and I can see that I've secured it because if I tug on this string, it doesn't really affect it up here. I've secured it enough and I just thought I'd bring the string to the bottom just to show how you would attach a bead. I'm just going to slop my bead over the needle but it's sitting right there. I could put my needle right back through the bulb and it would hang like that, but I think it looks even nicer if I just create a simple knot so we're just going to create a normal knot. Make a cross formation. I've brought my loose end over the string like that so you can see the cross there. Then because it went over, I'm now going to go underneath and then I can grab it from underneath like that. As I'm tightening my knot, I'm just making sure that the bead is around as close as I want it to be in the end, which is about here. Actually, I should have kept my needle on and I've just tightened it so that it's around that far away from my bauble, and then I'm going to go right back in the way I came and secure this. I'll go anywhere else in the bauble trying not to pick up any red roving wool. But if it does fray out, you can always le felt it back in. I just tightened it around that much so that it sits underneath the ball. Because this string could slip back through which would affect this, I'm just going to go do one more stroke anywhere. Actually, I might just do another for good luck and then I can cut my string. Then I'm just going to find the first end, cut that as well. Awesome. That was how to attach your bead to the bottom. Now let's just do the very last step of the ribbon. I'm going to do the cross. The loose end is on top, then that means that if I bring it under, creates a knot. Just making a knot. Making another knot. It might look a bit confusing, but that is my first knot, and then I've got my second knot right here, and I'm just going to pull it right down, pulling on all four, and there you have it. This is where I'm at right now. I've made 2 knots up here and this will keep it very secure. This is going to keep it really secure and if you just want to end it here, then that is great. If you want to tie a bow, we're just going to make a loop like that, wrap the other string round it there, and then poke this string through here. Then if you take both sides and both of the ribbon or bow ends, and just pull Then there is your bow. I think it'll look a lot cuter if it's a smaller bow, so I'm just going to pull on the ends like that. And I'm going to leave these to fall maybe about halfway down, nip that around there. And there I have my beautiful bauble ready to be hung on a Christmas tree. Next, I'm just going to briefly show car stores. 13. Turning it into a Garland ౨ৎ: So let's make a garland. Sure garland the word, maybe bunting. Basically, we're going to be stringing up. We're going to make a string of felted balls that could hang from one corner of your room to another, or I was thinking with this, I might just put a loop on this end and have it hanging somewhere just as a little decoration. Obviously, if you want to stretch it across a room, they don't need to be right close together, but just think about how many balls you might need. I've only got two because this is just for demonstration purposes. So let's make the kind of thing that you could hang from one place in your room to another. I've got some lovely green embroidery thread right here and an embroidery needle. So I'm just bringing it through, and I'm not going to cut it just yet. I'm just going to go right in. It's so easy with needle felting to add embroidery thread, even though it's quite thick, it really just glides through. And then, I mean, I want it to be I want it to be on the exact opposite side, but I can only eyeball it really. I'm just going to if I don't think I've got it right the first time, I'll just bring it in and then poke it back out or I'll bring it in and then twist it whichever way it needs to go. I think it needs to go that way, so I'm just going to push it there and up. Then you can just push on the end and tug it all the way through. We're not going to be doubling up the thread, just leave the end about that long. And you are just doing this for every single ball. I think you could knock them either side, but they're so easy to just move around and they really do stay where you've put them. So I've never found that necessary. I'm going to do them a little closer together. Then obviously, you might have more balls, but it just goes on like that really. We've got the whole roll at the back and then I'm going to finish our garland right here. You can. Maybe if you have washi tape, I sometimes would just take a little bit and tape that string to the wall on one end and do the same on the other end. But actually, another thing you can do because I want to leave you guys with as many options as possible. You're just going to bring the end back down. You have you've doubled it up at this point. I'm just going to get myself a bit more space there. I've doubled this up and then I'm going to make a ordinary knot while I've got two pieces of string here. So I just think this would look so pretty if you had pink orange, just some candy rainbow colors, the whole way along and you can hang it wherever. Obviously, left of course, if you left more room with this string, you could make the loop a lot bigger. I'm taking this end and I'm crossing it over and then bringing it through here. That just gives you a nice loop to hook your garland on. You could also snip this really close to the knot so that you can't really see it. There you have it. Then if you need two loops, you can cut this end and do the exact same thing. I really want to make a little decoration to hang this way up and I'm going to just add this to it. I think this is a little bit longer than my needle. I might have to work out a way to do this. I'm going to go in right at the top and then just push it through. It's come out here and I want it to be right at the top, the other side. I'm actually not sure if I can get it the whole way through because my needles are not long enough. I'm just going to pull it out here. And then I'm going to go back in exactly where I came and poke it out at the top. If I was bothered about that little hole there, I would just put more wool on top and needle felt it down. I want it to be this way up. Instead of making a loop at this end, I'm actually just going to knot it, and then you just pull. I don't think that's enough to hold it, so I'm just going to do one more. You could also thread in a little bead onto this one and then knot it after the bead has gone through. I've made a knot right there. I'll just test it. It doesn't really slip through, then I'm going to snip the other side. Oh, my gosh so many options, but inspiration has struck again and I just realized that you can add a little tassel at the bottom. Basically, if you grab the end right here and you wrap it around, I'm going to do three fingers down with your thumb and just start winding this around. I'm going to take it off my fingers. I've got this end here, not the one that's going into the bulble I'm just wrapping it around about two thirds of the way up the embroidery thread. Now I've got it on my needle and just so I know it's secure in place, I'm going to go directly through the centers like that and I don't mind that it's sticking out for now. Then I'm going to cut right through the middle of all of this string. This is the little tassel. It's quite far down. I'm actually just going to cut in between the tassel and the bauble. I'm just going to secure this back in. I'm just going to go round with this thread a few times to make sure it's super secure. Then I'll just cut that off. Now I'm going in with this thread and I am going to attach it to my tassel. I've just used the needle to thread it through and now I can take it out and do a lovely little knot on top. I'm going to double knot it so that it doesn't come undone. You can sharpen up the edges if you want. And here is my gorgeous tassel. I didn't know if it would work at all, but I mean, I think it's good for my first try. I just wanted to share the idea mainly. This is my finished hanging decoration. I think this would look so good with some pastel colors. I will see you in the tro. 14. Thank You! ღ: I want to say such a huge congratulations on completing this course. I'm so happy for you that you've completed it, and I hope you're incredibly happy with your project. Maybe this one's my personal favorite with a little bead on it, and at the end, I also made this one. Maybe you have a garland, a little charm, or maybe you went freestyle. In any case, if you're super happy with it, definitely tag me on Instagram. I would genuinely really love to see anything that you create this is my app right here. Definitely leave a comment. Have a question. If you're stuck on something, if something went wrong, I will get you back on track in no time. I'd love to just see what you thought of the course anyway because this is my first Skillshare course. If there's any suggestions that you have, I'm thinking I might make a tutorial on how to make needle feltered bunnies because if you don't know by now, I love bunnies so much. These are some of the things I've made. I don't know if I can This one's like this one, I really like this one. I was thinking I might make a course on how to make bunnies, but as a beginner YouTuber, what would you like to see? What's the next thing that you'd like to make? Because I do think N felting can be very simple and I'm sure that you can do anything that you want. Whether you think it's more on the advanced scale or another beginner starter project, I would just love to hear any suggestions. All right. I think that's it for me. Yeah, thank you so much for watching this course. Bye.