Needle Felted Beads

Yesterday I was stuck at home with a bit of a stomach bug. I start to go a bit stir crazy though, and then I remembered that a while back I had bought some lovely hand dyed roving. I pulled out my felting needle, a sponge, the roving - I now have a bowl full of lovely beads. I discovered that blue faced leicester is the easiest (out of what I had) to needle felt, but the merino wool roving had the loveliest feel.

The general idea for needle felting round beads is that you take a small amount of roving, and roll it into a nice tight ball.

* Roll this ball in the palm of your hand for 30 seconds or so to help shape it up.

* Lightly place your new ball on the sponge, and start poking it with your felting needle. Keep turning the ball around, and poke from different angles and sides to keep the ball round.

* Be careful! - that needle is really, really sharp.

* Keep poking (a couple minutes) until your bead is nice and tight. If you made it a solid colour, you can take itty bitty bits of roving to add dots, or stripes on your new bead.

* These would also look fabulous embellished with beads, or sequins

There are my instructions in a nutshell - I'm not an expert. For any veterans out there, feel free to add in tips or omissions - or even point out - why on earth is she doing it like that? :-)

Here are some pics of the process - Also stay tuned tomorrow for what to do with your new bowl of beads!


Please excuse the lighting - again no real camera, just my Iphone, and a really dark, rainy day...