Needle felting and glorious tins

ARE YOU GETTING USED TO THESE MESSAGES YET? I AM GOBSMACKED, SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE JOINED THE "ALL THE COLOURS OF THE RAINBOW" SWAP ALREADY, THANK YOU SO MUCH, GIRLS. THERE ARE STILL A FEW COLOURS LEFT, SO IF YOU HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT IT........... JUST DO IT, PUT YOUR NAME DOWN FOR A COLOUR! PARTNERS WILL BE DRAWN ON MONDAY, YIPPEE!

Remember those felt beads I made whilst we were in France? Well, I had a lot of those wool tops left over, and I had been fascinated by needle felting for a long time, so I decided to give that a go. Now what needle would one use? Nice thick darning needle, a very thin beading needle, normal sewing needle? Errrmm, apparently none of those, lol. When I read up on needle felting, it appeared that there are very special felting needles, deadly little whatsits actually, with barbs! They sounded really cruel, lol, and I wasn't at all sure that I would be able to find one locally. But, as on many occasions before, our lovely little local shop Thimbelina proved to be a little goldmine, they did stock felting needles and even a few wool tops for felting.

Wool tops

Dang, those little darlings are lethal! I have a number of puncture marks on my fingers to prove it. Let me see whether I can get a close up of those wicked little barbs, hmm..... nah, they won't show up, they are tiny, just take my word for it, they might be tiny but they are horrid.

I love all sorts of different corsages, I pin different ones to different jumpers all the time, so naturally I had to try needle felting flowers. It really is very therapeutic, making felt from wool tops, just using a needle and a foam pad. The repetative needle movement is quite soothing, but...... its also great when you are feeling somewhat peed off with somebody or something, stabbing madly at the wool does wonders for getting rid of aggression, lol.

Here are my first three attempts at making corsages using the needle felting technique. They are as light as a feather, so delicate-

First one, embellished with freshwater pearls

Second one, embellished with a gorgeous vintage glass button

Third one, decorated with three vintage orange buttons and a freshwater pearl, quite autumnal

And whilst we are talking of making stuff, I finally got around to taking a few pics of that decoupage box I had been talking about in an earlier post. I had bought some very old embroidery magazines ( 50cents ), which were literally falling to pieces, which was fine with me, because I wanted to decorate a shoe box with them. I could never bring myself to cut up old magazines which were in good order, lol. So I spent a few hours cutting out lots of different patterns, very carefully, mind, because the paper was quite fragile, and then spent a lovely morning in the garden arranging them on the shoe box. Its not finished yet, I need to apply a couple more coats of varnish. The really old magazine has discoloured much more, it is looking quite brown, whereas the other bits have kept their lighter colour-


Ooh oooh, and taking that box out reminded me of the lovely old tins I had found at the vide greniers and in Emmaus. Wanna see them today, or shall I post them later? Oh, alright then, today. Just as well, because I have a two day fair coming up this weekend and might not be blogging for a few days.

Here goes, lots of loooooooooovely old tins, oh, and one box, this one, a lovely fabric covered box-


Lovely set of three toile de jouy print tins
Just look at that gorgeous, intense deep blue




Gorgeous little money box tin, just look at that fab aqua colour on the shields
I love this tin, the bamboo background and the sweet flowers