Fun with Arts and Crafts

My friend Sue, from Fiber Lingo, and I have begun getting together now and then to learn new techniques that we can both incorporate into our own work. A couple of weeks ago I went over to her house and we made felted miliflori beads drawing from her vast collection of beautifully colored fleece. We started by rolling up individual colors then grouping those together and covering the whole bunch of them with even more wool. At the end of this step our logs looked like this: (mine is the bluer one)

Next we wet them with warm soapy water and began to roll the bejeebers out of them. When we decided that they were compacted tightly enough we put them on the floor and continued to roll them, this time using our feet! If this wasn't enough the next step was to beat them into complete submission:

All of this abuse was well worth the effort when we cut off the ends of our rolls and saw what was inside:

Our final step was to cut a 1/2 inch slice that would become a bead once it, and its sisters, had been carefully soaked in acrylic floor finish to keep them in one piece:

I may end up having to shave my beads as I did not use merino on my outer wrap or, maybe, the acrylic will hold the hairs in - we'll see - it's an adventure!
Thanks to Interweave Felt Magazine and their article by Carol Cypher for the directions for this project.

And speaking of adventures, next time I'll tell you all about our learning to use Sue's enamel kiln! For red-hot glass and metal it is soo cool!!