Monday, May 17, 2010

TWO PROJECTS COMPLETED!

Well, almost two completed.....
I just need to add whiskers.
I was excited to finally finish my needle-felted Mr. Bunny.
He was a good learning experience for me since I had to try to 
gauge equal size arms, legs and ears.  He does have one ear a little longer then the other.  (The easier to hear you with!)
 He stands about 6 inches high and only about 2 1/2 inches wide.
Last Saturday I got to take a class from the very sweet and talented,
Jennifer Hernandez of  the Polka Dot Pixie.
We would be creating her little Love Birds out of paper clay on a
paper mache box.  
  I added some iridescent glitter to mine.  It would be so cute as a cake topper.
Jennifer taught us so many techniques and tips for working and sculpting paperclay.
I can hardly wait to take another class from her.  
I have another set of love birds sculpted and now need to paint and decorate them.
On Thursday I will be heading up to Washington state to see my daughter, Bre and her family and then will babysit our grandsons for the week while Bre and Kyle vacation down here in our house.  I'm so excited to be able to spend 12 days with the boys.  Hubby and I plan to spoil them "rotten!"  
Now I need to decide what project to take with me to work on while I'm gone.
I'm thinking maybe some little yellow needlefelted chicks.
Time to start packing!
XOXO NANCY

Friday, May 7, 2010

POKE, POKE, POKE!!!

OK, I'm hooked!  I'm in a Needle Felting frenzy!!!
Meet, "Lilac," she is my first bird.  Silly bird.
I experimented with wire legs and realized quickly that I need to use a much thicker wire next time. But I managed to get her to stand up anyway...skinny legs and all! 
I had a little bit of orange and yellow wool so I 
practiced making a little pumpkin too.
This is my new project.  Sorry for the poor picture
quality. I am working on the middle one.
I just finished attaching the feet. Yikes, this picture
it kind of not nice!

Now I'm working on the ears.
OOoops! I just remembered that I need to needle in some white wool down the middle of the 
underside of the ears before I attach them.
Hope to finish him this weekend.  No needling tomorrow as I work
all day. Hubby has been down on the couch for 2 days now with the respiratory flu. I know he's feeling pretty bad when he cancels his golf games!
Today I got my nails filled, shopped for a couple new tops, floated around in our pool for a couple hours and then worked on my bunny.  Love days like this. I have a ton of ironing I should be doing right now, but I really just want to read all the blogs I follow.  Man, it would be awesome to have full-time maid!
Good news:  Our daughter, Bre's MS flare-up is finally starting to calm down.  She is up and getting around now.  But they did cancel their vacation to New York in a couple weeks.  Just too much walking involved.  So they will come down and stay in our house while we go up and babysit the boys for the week.  Much less stressful for Bre that way.  
Gotta run.....the needle is calling me!
XOXO NANCY 



Saturday, May 1, 2010

Creating Again!

FINALLY!!!!
Geez, it's been weeks, no, maybe months, since I have created something new.  It's taken the inspiration bug a long time to bite, but it finally did yesterday.  I bought this Needle Felting Kit about 3 years ago while shopping the AZ Sewing Expo with my
dear friend, Vicki.  It was our intention to come home and figure out how to do this together. Well, more exciting things must have come up cause we never even opened the package while she was here.  Actually, I think both of us were scared to attempt it
since neither one of us had ever done any Needle Felting. But alas, I broke it open on a whim yesterday morning and worked on it all day.  After I broke 6 felting needles (hey, they are very thin and very delicate)I had to quit until I could run to Joann's this morning and buy some replacements.  
Here's the beginning of the egg being formed. It's amazing
that you can compact so much wool roving into this
small, tight ball. Not to mention how many needle pokes
in my fingers that I suffered!!!  Wow, and does that hurt!
Here I am adding some decoration to the egg.
Finishing up my little chick.
He does kind of look more like a
little yellow bird.
Just pretend he's a chick!
A few polk-a-dots and......
TA-DA!!!!
 Not too bad for a first attempt.
I had so much fun creating it that I managed to get online
and order a couple more kits.
Hopefully my fingers will be healed before the kits arrive.
I had a surprise visit from my two favorite little girls
yesterday.

They always put a smile on my face.  
Gotta run now and watch the 
Kentucky Derby.
The heck with the horses, it's all about the awesome hats all the 
ladies are wearing!!  He-he!
XOXO NANCY