after a lot of preparation for maker faire, an intense weekend (i won two editor’s choice awards!)  and a week of custom orders, it is good to get back to regular ole stress reducing sculpting.  i fixed mr. pull toy chicken this morning after he was punched, pulled, bitten (seriously), and tossed by his admirers. a new tight layer of clean beautiful wool and he is ready for market.

my Etsy shop is finally open! I will post him tonight.

i have gotten many requests for beginner needle felting kits, so i finally got some together for maker faire.    i have a baby robot, a puffer fish, cupcakes, and a baby dino kit.

My booth! i really meant to take more pictures, but time flew by and lots of people wanted to learn how to needle felt.

i spent an extra day in austin looking around in vintage boutiques for things i can add to my sculpting. i found this  porcelain doll arm and many other goodies that i will show off later.

on the way back, i started four heads in the car. some days faces come easy to me, and some days i cant figure out how to do them. very strange. so when i am able to do one, i usually try to make four or five.

this is the beginning of a  big head bunny made from one of the heads i started in the car. the arm is not attached yet, but you get the idea.

back to work!

i started making this guy on friday… i thought he looked a little rodent like so went to the pet store and bought him a toy for inspiration.

he needed a rodent like tail, so i lightly felted a long piece of wool.

i wanted to get cartoon like ribbing on the tail and but needle felting each “rib” would have taken a very long time and i am sure i would have stabbed myself repeatedly.  so i put rubber bands down the length of the tail, wet felted it, let it dry and then dyed it pink.

the tail did’nt come out exactly how i envisioned it, but i do love it.i added wire before i attached it so it would be posable.  awww, my new pet monster with his toy! but he still needs a name…any suggestions?

it may have been picking up all the branches after the storm that inspired acacia…

she is needle felted with embroidered rings on her feet. i wish i would have taken more process pictures, but i was going through a bit of a creativity block until she popped into my head. i just started felting and made her in about two hours.  it wasn’t until i was gathering curly willow that i remembered to take pictures.

i decided to dye her arms a greenish brown so that the branches would look like they were growing out of her arms.

back to the kool aid… lime + cherry = pretty green. i brought the dye to a boil and just held her arms in the dye bath until enough of it soaked in.

i wrestled with wire for about an hour until i was sure the branches were not going to move and voila!

a new love.  Acacia!

oh, and i made her some hot pink fruit to hang in her branches.

]]> http://licoricetree.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/acacia/feed/ 2 licorice tree dsc031841 dsc03183 dsc03187 http://licoricetree.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/hurri-crafting/ http://licoricetree.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/hurri-crafting/#comments Tue, 16 Sep 2008 15:07:37 +0000 tobiah p. mundt http://licoricetree.wordpress.com/?p=198 ]]>

what does one do when there is no power for 2 days?   well, you craft of course…and then you clean your craft room.  lucie is a needle felted puppet that i never finished because there was always something about her that i didnt like…her face, her mouth…her ears.

then along came hurricane ike and a desperate need for another battery operated light source. i rummaged through my unorganized craft room, found some lamp parts and then i spied lucie!

lucie was needle felted hollow because she was intended to be a puppet—perfect for a lampshade.

i wanted to spruce her up so that once all went dark she would be pretty to look at so i gave her a felt rose for her hair, eyelashes and teeth.

lucie giving me light to sketch by  + a guitar playing husband made having no power not so bad.

we went to the store this morning to get provisions for hurricane ike.   while most baskets were filled with water, bread, ice and canned food, we focused on buying a few real essentials:

1. wine, of course. we were the only people wine browsing .

2. nuts, craisins and dark chocolate m&m’s to make my famous mix. the other ingredients are a secret.

3. a 12.99!!! can opener, because the one we have is electric. who knew regular can openers were 12.99!

4. apples–golden delicious, because they didnt have my favorite pink ladies

5. graham crackers because i will need a cookie when the lights go out.

we are sooo prepared.  it is a good thing that our pantry was already full of the real essentials.

i’m going help put up storm windows now. whooopee!

Meet Kiyoshi 淳!

last week i set out to needle felt a bat with wings made with umbrella parts. his wings turned out better than i thought they would because they have a full range of motion despite the wool. when i was almost done felting him,i decided to try a cabbage dye to give him a blue-ish grey color.

FIRST i chopped up some pretty red cabbage

i let it boil for an hour and drained it. i didn’t want to use alum to set the dye, so i added vinegar to the cabbage water and the color instantly turned from a deep blue to a bright pink.

i added mr. batty.

he was very pink and looked very unhappy. i let him boil for 5 minutes.

‘mmm smell that cabbagey, wooly bat soup.

thankfully, once i rinsed him there was no smell cabbagey smell at all but he was drab – very drab.

not at all the pretty blue-grey that i was going for.

in order to save mr. batty from his drabness, i mixed blue raspberry kool aid and black cherry kool aid until i got a very deep blue. i closed my eyes, hoping this would help and not hinder mr. batty’s color situation, and dunked him in the pot of blue.  i boiled him for about 20 minutes to let the dye set and woila! the perfect shade of muted purple i love it!

i hand dried him with a blow dryer so that the metal umbrella parts would dry quickly then i lightly needle felted him all over to tighten up the loose wool.  this morning i made him some socks and freckles and gave him a name…

淳

Kiyoshi which means the quiet one in Japanese.

]]> http://licoricetree.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/kiyoshi-%e6%b7%b3-needle-felted-umbrella-bat/feed/ 11 licorice tree http://licoricetree.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/batty/ http://licoricetree.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/batty/#comments Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:50:48 +0000 tobiah p. mundt http://licoricetree.wordpress.com/?p=137 ]]>

i went a little batty yesterday when i got sick of making sugar foots. i have been wanting to make a bat for a while now, but i wasn’t sure how i would approach it.

should he be sweet or mean? white, black or some random color? i still don’t know.

i did know that i wanted to use umbrella parts for the wings so they would open and close, so i went to the dollar store, got an umbrella and took it apart.

then i searched flickr for some plush bat inspiration.

i have looove sotosofties work, especially her bats, like freddie here.

and jennybubbletime’s shy looking guy is adorable.

okay. all inspired.

i’m gonna make him a little mean and a little sweet.  i found this sketch i did a few weeks ago.

not sure if i want to go for the realistic bat nose.

the dollar store umbrella was way to easy to take apart. it would not have lasted 5 minutes in a storm.

i pulled a bear head out of the pile of the unfinished, cut his ears off and got to felting a body. i really just wanted to get to the wings.

looks like a bat to me.

i just started wrapping and felting…

and here is my progress so far…