Needle felting

My needle felting supplies came yesterday. I'd had a long couple of days was too tired to concentrate enough to craft, so was slobbing out in front of coronation street and had a little play with it.

I bought my colour co-ordinated 'kit' from Crafty Notions,

http://www.craftynotions.com/npk.htm

and this is what came in the plastic box:

A fairly dense sponge block - about 4 x 6 x 1.5 inches.
Felt and muslin
several shimmery nylon fibres
2 different colours of wool
a length of wrapped wool fancy fibre
some silk or imitation silk fibres
a bit of organza ribbon
5 felting needles
1 tool

I laid my 'backing material' (felt for my first go, the instructions say you can use the muslin the end effect would be different.)

I laid fibres of various kinds randomly across the felt and started stabbing with 4 needles in the tool. I also tried using one needle without the tools, as the instructions suggested, and discovered that I liked that much better! It gave me more control over what I was doing and my 'inner control freak' was much happier about that!



There is a lot of repetitive stabbing, but the fibres felt together quite quickly and you have a great deal of control over which elements and colours go where (unlike traditional 'wet' felting).
I think this is a great way of creating small embellishments - you can make a patch of 4 x 4 inches of felt in half an hour or so, and you could cut or die cut (or maybe even punch?) shapes out of it, to add to other projects. Or you could easily make enough to turn into a little evening bag.

I think the kit is probably OK in terms of value for money, but if I had understood the process and requirements better, I'd just have bought 5 medium felting needles and the foam - because I already have felt and lots of fibres in my stash!

I did like the fact that this is something you could take with you and do anywhere - doctors waiting room, train, bus etc and the results are fast enough to satisfy my 'instant gratification' needs.