How To Make An Easter Bunny Brooch

How To Make An Easter Bunny Brooch

Published in Issue 22, April2013

Written by Nicola from Cutie and the Feast

http://www.cutieandthefeast.co.uk

What you will need:

A needle felting mat or piece of foam (you can also use a clean washing  up sponge) 

Approx 40g of wool roving in your main colour

A small amount of black and pink wool roving

Some thin (5mm) double-faced satin ribbon 

Small scissors 

Needle and thread

Felting needle, ideally one 38 gauge and one 40 gauge but if you just have one then either will be ok. A 38mm brooch finding  

Step 1. To start take a piece of wool roving in the main colour of your bunny and roll between your hands into a ball. You want the ball of wool roving to be a bit bigger than your finished brooch. If in doubt start with a smaller piece and then add to it until you get the size that you want. 

Using the 38 gauge needle start to jab at the wool. As you jab you will notice that the fibres start to knit together. 

Keep jabbing and reforming the ball shape, bringing the fibres into the middle of your ball (but be careful these needles are sharp!)

You will want to create a disc shape that is flat on the back and slightly rounded to the front. To do this start to jab on the sides of your wool until you get a nice even shape. 

Step 2. Once you have your basic head shape it’s time to add a bunny nose. 

Take a smaller piece of wool roving and make a small ball. Position this towards to bottom of the face in the middle (where a bunny nose should be) and use your 38 gauge needle to jab the wool. The wool roving will knit together with the main part of the brooch. 

If you aren’t sure how much wool to use add a small amount at a time, its easy to add more but very difficult to take it away.

Step 3. Next, make the ears. Take a piece of wool roving and roll into a sausage shape. Jab at the wool until your ears become firm.  Leave one end of your ear un-jabbed, you will use this fluffy bit to attach the ear to the bunny head. 

Make two ears in the same way and try to get them even, then take a small piece of pink wool roving and jab into the middle of each ear.

Step 4. Now attach each ear to the bunny using the tufts at the base of the ear. Using the 38 gauge needle jab into the head and also through the ear.

Nearly there, your bunny just needs some personality! 

Step 5. Using your smaller 40 gauge needle add small pieces of black wool roving, for the eyes and mouth, and a small amount of pink or peach wool roving for the nose. 

Tie a bow out of your ribbon and fix to the bunny using a needle and thread. 

If you like you can also give your bunny some whiskers. Take two strands of thread or embroidery floss and thread through a needle, then pass the needle through the nose of you bunny. Don’t pull the needle all the way through so that some of the thread is on the other side and the length that you want your whiskers to be, then snip off your thread so that the whiskers are even on each side. 

Finally if you would like to wear your bunny, add a brooch back. It’s really easy to add, take a small piece of wool roving in the same colour as your bunny and jab over the top of the brooch finding into the bunny making sure to jab in between the holes of the finding and close to the edge. 

Ta Dah! You are finished and have a cute little bunny to wear for Easter. 

A secret valentines’ love message

Published in Issue 20, December 2012

Written by Nicola from Cutie and The Feast

A secret valentines’ love message 

What you will need

Some cardstock to use as the base of your card

Scraps of card or other embellishments as decoration

A long match

Double sided tape/glue to assemble your card. 

Pilot  Frixon pen

Ordinary biro (in a colour that matches the Frixon pen).

Single hole punch

Step 1. You’ll need to decide on what you want your hidden message to be and then the text that will hide the message. 

For  example, my hidden message will be “ I Love You” The text that I’m going to hide this in will be:

The principle is that anything you write with the Frixon pen will disappear when exposed to heat as this is an erasable pen. 

You will need to write your hidden message with an ordinary biro and the surrounding text with the Frixon. The text in red should be written with the biro and the text in black written with the Frixon. But remember to use the same colour pen otherwise it won’t be a secret message!

When you think about hiding your message you can use whole words, letters or just parts of letters to make up the text. 

Step 2. Decide on the size of your text. If you want to include a cupid’s arrow match then you’ll need to make your text a little bit smaller than the diagonal length of the match. 

Step 3. Write out your message and remember to swap pens! 

I’ve used a piece of white card cut into the shape of a heart and mounted on some red glitter card.  Its quite simple but I want the focus to be the magic text. 

Step 4. Make a cupid’s arrow match by cutting a small piece of red card into the same of a heart and gluing to the end of the match.  Lay your match diagonally across the heart and mark where you are going to punch holes. Using a single hole punch, awl or anything you can make a hole with punch two holes so that you can slot your match through. 

Step 5. Assemble your card and add any additional embellishment. You will need to hold the card a little way above a flame so it’s best not to use anything that could get in the way and catch fire.