Felt Beads!

When I was at the Fold on Saturday, I saw the wall of merino fiber in every conceivable color and homeschooling crafts came to mind!  I grabbed a bag and tried to get a bit of just about every color so that Maddie and I could try our hands at making some felted beads.  Aren't the colors gorgeous all piled up together?

I gathered the necessary tools, which seemed to be only dish soap, towels and a bowl for the warm soapy water.  (I just kind of surfed around the web a bit this morning to see if I could find some different "how-to's" to lead me in the right direction.)

What we did was this:

1. Chose the color we wanted and broke off a bit about twice the size of the finished bead.
2. Rolled it into as smooth a ball as we could manage and then dunked it into the bowl of warm, soapy water.
3. Fished it out and started gently rolling it between our palms to get it into a spherical shape.
4. When it got too dry we dunked it back into the warm soapy water.  When it got too soapy we dunked it into a bowl of warm, plain water.
5. Repeat 3 & 4 until the bead is the size you want or until you are plum worn out!

Here are the finished beads and the bowls of water.  Not much output, but we also tried some beads with some BFL and they just didn't work out at all.  And keep in mind -- you have to roll these for probably 5-10 minutes each (5 for me, 10 for Maddie who didn't use much pressure).  Maddie thought it was a lot of fun though, so I'm sure we will be doing it again. 

Oh -- and see her sheep up in the left hand corner?  MSL Kids had a section on sheep in the Winter Issue and this was one of the crafts.  Cute, huh?

So here is a close-up of our beads.  I'm thinking that I want to try some with other colors layered on top, or maybe I could embroider them after they dry.  I seem to remember seeing something like that somewhere.  Oh the possibilities!

Comments

[Fulvia]

You could also needle-felt unto them additional wool. Needle-felting allows you to have very tight control of a design ... but watch out for the pricking! Have fun.

[Imbrium]

Very cute! Do you have a final project in mind for them, or did you make them for the sheer joy of creation?

[Strikkelise]

What a fun project! Maybe I'll try this with my little girl. Thanks for the walk-through.
Cute sheep, too!

[Chris]

Hmm, I wonder if you could use them for buttons??

[Sandrine (alias Didine!)]

I'm so happy to find these explanations !! Thanks you soooo much ! If you have a minute, I'm making a "survey" about crafters' nails on my blog ! I would be very happy to have your opinion ! thanks a lot ! Cheers

[Sarah]

Martha Stewart Kids had examples of these with stripes and polka dots. http://tinyurl.com/7kspr

[Katy]

You can also make a felt ball (a larger bead) with layered colors (red in the center, blue wrapped around it, etc.) and then cut it open when it's dry--it looks like a geode!
And I think it's easier to felt a slightly larger ball; felting the little beads always hurt my hands.
When you feel particularly adventurous, do a search for the "hat on a ball" felting technique. And Pat Spark has a felting page with all kinds of resources. ;)

[Christie]

Fun, Fun and Fun!

[Dena]

My daughter (6 yr) and I have been making felted bead bracelets for every birthday since September. They've been a lot of fun. Check out our first try at http://childsfamily.com/knitting/?p=74. And my three year old likes to join in, but gets bored quickly. Then he lets his plastic sharks take a swim in the soapy water.

[Annie]

I often have the kids in my class make their own "counters" for math activities. These would work great!! You could do simple counting, adding and and subtracting or string them like an abacus (dental floss works well.) Later you can use different colors to represent place value (ex. 10 "reds" =1 "blue" for the tens place)