More felted flowers

Of course I didn't make just one flower! Here are some more pins.

 Note that I placed buttons in the center of these--and they ain't your run-of-the-mill buttons, neither. All of these buttons have been covered in vintage fabric from my extensive and exhaustive stash of fabric.




An icy cool pink and blue colorway...

And two in a flamin' hot explosion!





















Tomorrow...hair thing-a-ma-bobs for young and old. Can ya hardly wait??

Felted sweater flowers

So.... what did I make with that glorious felted sweater flower bit stash that I created??

Well you might ask, my friends! I made a bunch of flowers, of course. And then made them into various items. Here's the low down on one of these babies!

 Here's a finished flower using the Kool-Aid dyed petals (the very bottom whorl), the natural shade of heathered blue of the sweater (next whorl up) and then 2 whorls of yellow and then gold for the sexual parts (the stamens and the carpels). [OK, now you're saying: huh? and I have to admit that my grown-up job is teaching biology and botany at the university level. So the terminology just happens. Sorry. Can't help it]

Here's the flower from the back. You can see that I have sewn a pin on the back. Thus, this flower is a pin/broach. A big, exuberant flower pin.

 And a little bit of a close up so you can see the details. While it isn't 100% botanically accurate, I think it still has the flavor of a real flower center.













I have this ongoing goal of stepping up and developing my brand. That includes developing my logo, which you saw a few posts ago. Currently, I'm integrating that logo into business cards, invoices and product packaging in an effort to really look professional and add perceived value to my items.

So here you see the card stock mount that the pin is mounted on.

I'm really pleased with how it looks. And when you see a whole group of these together, it really looks great.

I made some other stuff, too! More flower items as well as some related items using different materials. So stay tuned!

I

Kool-Aid Fun

 I know its been a long while--sorry, my friends!

Its been a busy time lately and I have actually been working on a lot of crafts. One of the things that I have been doing is working on a lot of felted sweater bits.  In have finally amassed a good stash of sweaters to use but the color palette left a lot to be desired. So I decided that I would just make my own colors by dyeing what I needed with....Kool-Aid. Lots of advantages with the stuff--no nasty chemicals involved so I can use my cooking pots. Its readily available (well, more or less).  Its already pre-measured. And its cheap!

 So check out this gorgeous peacock blue in my first pic. Isn't it lovely? And here's my pile of already cut up and felted wool bits ready to go. Some is already blue, but its a rather dull blue so I wanted to see if I could beef it up a little with some Ice Blue Raspberry Lemonade flavor Kool-Aid. OK, yeah, yeah, basically, its blue. That's all you need to know.

 Here is a close-up of my "before" wool.  As you can see I have blue, pink and some off-white.

At this point I have boiled the Kool-Aid and wool for about 5 minutes and then let it sit for about an hour. Note how the water is now clear again--all of the dye has been taken up by the wool. Cool, huh? The citric acid in the Kool-Aid acts as the mordant so the dye is permanent.

After drying in a hot dryer (which further promotes the felting) I have a beautiful pile of various shades of blue felt bits. Much more to my liking!


Now I just have about 9 more different colors to try!