I made these cats out of wool, and then needle felted wool on top. Needle felted the ears and other bits too.

1. Felted kitties together, 2. felted kitties, 3. felted kitty, 4. close up felted kitties

I love working small.

The eyes on this tiny one are German glass eye beads. These are much better than seed beads because the hole isn’t as large.

I bought them on Ebay, from a very helpful seller who sells bear making supplies.

http://myworld.ebay.ie/mohair-bear-making-supplies But I can’t see any eyes there for sale at the moment.

I also bought cotter pins for jointing. Must figure out how they work.

I put this how-to up on Cut & Paste.

I love diamond shapes… So nice. This is a diamond mural over our mantle.

I put up a how-to on Cut Out + Keep. I’ve been meaning to add some how-tos. OK, so this first one is pretty simple.
Diamond Mural how-to on Cut Out + Keep.

I got this idea from the Home Studio Home book from Todd Oldham’s decorating series. I now have that one and Camp Nest. I love the series.

Fecal Face put up some photos from the Home Studio Home book.

Photo from Home Studio Home at Fecal Face

Great stuff!

One of the first assignments!

This wreath follows some ideas I discovered doing my Style file: light colours, and punches of red.

I made a few alterations because I’m awful for following craft directions.

• Cheeky, I combined the fabric pompoms with the wreath project. Truth is, I would not likely wear the fabric pompoms.
• Also, foam circles were too dear… ($10 USD each). So I used an old shirt and parted with some of my vintage buttons. Then stuffed it.
  I made one ‘mistake pancake’ before this… trying to get the seams on the inside on my first try… Turning it inside out looked wonky. Better to let the seams out and use pinking shears!
• I cut 2 out of a knit tee, and 1 out of cotton batting. I machine quilted the batting to the top layer. Then sewed all 3 together, leaving a stuffing-hole. Reason for batting? To reduce lumpyness when stuffing.

See more in my My Styleschool assignments

Hmm.. one problem with wreaths… no one hangs wreaths on their doors in Ireland (a very few people do at Christmas). Wreaths really are for people’s graves. So in Ireland this doesn’t say: “welcome”. I think it’ll be coming down for St Brigid’s day when I can get a cross for spring.

Maybe I can find someone to swap with me… Or I might harvest the buttons off it later, not sure!

Needle felting.. why ever did I wait so long? I was afraid? I have no idea.

But I got a needle-felting needle & foam pad and even wool last Christmas from Dmaxi (thank you!!!). and for some reason it took me ages upon ages to have a go. I tried it, and was shocked… it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought. If you’ve been wondering you must give it a go.

I recommend the Norweigan wool from Sara’s Texture Crafts supply… it’s so soft but “crimped” as Sara explained to me. It shapes up so quickly. Big thumbs up from me. The Shetland she has is lovely too because of a light lanolin scent which I love.

I just purchased a creature from Kit Lane. I pounced on the shopping cart… Tilda. So freeking cute.

By far my favourite felted monster maker is Kit Lane. So original, so funny. She makes up stories and the best descriptions of her creatures in her shop. See Kit Lane’s Flickr page.

This is a screenshot of Kit Lane's shop. And Tilda is sold!

So I have prepared a welcoming party waiting for Tilda.

But I *did* do the “preview” assignment. Pick a color and make a box dedicated to that colour.

Ours came out a little wonky, but as you can see, Saba pretty much likes ANYTHING made out of cardboard.

Cardboard is becoming a major art supply for me lately. Ever since the session with Andy Parsons.

Here, we’re making another cat house. My nephew did well with the planning: windows, two doors. V good fun!

For a Christmas present for my nephew, I painted a mural on his wall. The final idea was developed collaboratively with my sister and her partner. Originally I was just going to paint his name- but my sister is so interested in making learning opportunities, she wanted it to be ‘educational’. She originally wanted the figural numbers, 1, 2, 3… but I pointed out that children his age (um, just over 1 year) are still learning the concepts of numbers, there’s no point teaching them the figural numbers… just like there’s no point teaching them the letter symbols.

So I said we should put on dots, and group them in clumps. This is how we actually count. If I threw down 23 marbles, you’d visually group up sets of 5, for example, and then see the 3 marbles remaining. You wouldn’t have to count, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. I can’t seem to find the statistic for how high the average set size is, which people can visually ’see’. Is it 8? I know there are autistic people who can count hundreds of objects all at once. Anyway!

That was the idea behind putting the dots on the balloons. In the basket then, we have the figures for the numbers. And we have colours too. So they can play games by throwing balls at the balloons, getting points, etc. And it’s just fun to look at.

As soon as I was working on it, he was interested in getting up and touching a balloon and touching each dot, one after another. I think it might actually help him. Who knows!

I gave them out at Christmas to each person in my family. As I explained as I passed them out: we look back at ‘08 and say- oh well I didn’t get around to it. So now, they have no excuse. We all went around and said what it was we want to get around to this coming year. Some funny things, some serious, some secret goals! I love my family, they’re such good sports. My dad then brought out a letter from his grandmother about Nana’s first Christmas. He said: “Are we ready to get serious?” But it was so sweet- especially with my sister’s new baby there.

I wanted the round-tuits to be yellow, to look like butter- like it was pressed in butter. (Nana always said margarine was horrible and you should only use pure butter). Didn’t exactly come out the way I planned, but alas and alack. If I had to do it again, I’d leave off the coat of clear varnish. The powdery feel of the bisque firing was much more-ish.

I tied them with silk ribbon I bought from Christopher Pines on Etsy: http://christopherpines.etsy.com. Really lovely sheer silk ribbon. I recommend her gorgeous trims. Oo! And I see she keeps a blog too: http://www.thetintiara.blogspot.com/

SHE KNIT ME A COWL! In gorgeous green alpaca silk, yum. I should take a photo of how you wear it. I sort of folds across my neck, and keeps my neck and chest warm where my jacket is open.

Dearbhala included other lovely gifts- as you can see, but the best was this tremendous yarn Manos del Uraguay 100% Wool- out of which I made this hat. I had a challenge to make it work with the 100g skein- crochet gobbles up yarn. I undid and redid this so many times. At one point, I kept the yarn intact, and started working from the other end to make the hat cuff(?) so I could find out how much was left. There wasn’t one centimeter of yarn left when I was done.