Melissa from Crafting with Cat Hair on making Felt M&M Cookies! Couldn’t you just see these heart shaped for valentine’s day?

“I absolutely love to use felt to make crafts. Not only is it easy to cut and sew, but is super cheap! One 11 x 9 sheet of acrylic felt, which can be bought at your local craft store, costs around 20 cents a sheet. My favorite item to craft out of felt is play food, especially sweets. I have done plenty of felt sweets over the past several years, so I thought I would share with you a super simple and fun felt cookie tutorial.” More…

From Chica & Jo, this is a great treat idea!

“Hi, we’re Chica and Jo! Dot asked us to share our idea with you for chocolate-covered marshmallow treats. These treats are a fantastic snack for any occasion and are a big hit for holidays, birthday parties, family dinners, or just a rainy day inside with the kids.
Jo was inspired to make these treats after having something similar at Disney World, when she had chocolate-covered marshmallows on a stick. With some quick experimenting, we found that they were very easy to create and customize at home. Here are the simple steps as well as a fun idea for what to use as the holder.” More…

Hello, I’m Sally from Pollywog’s Cakewalk brings us a really great tutorial on how to make a little gnome using needle felting.

“I had the wonderful opportunity to take a needle felting class at a local community farm where I made this little sheep [picture].
I fell in love with a gnome that was made by the instructor and decided to try and replicate it. Steps Follow: ..” More…

I had the wonderful opportunity to take a needle felting class at a local community farm where I made this little sheep.

I fell in love with a gnome that was made by the instructor and decided to try and replicate it. Steps Follow:

1-Using a pipe cleaner I made the basic shape for my gnome. Using pipe cleaners helps stabilize your three dimensional piece. Also making it hard for arms or legs to be pulled off.
2-I started by wrapping the pipe cleaner with roving and securing it in place with the felting needle. This is done by stabbing the needle into the roving repeatedly. The sponge gives you a surface to work on that the needle to poke into while you are felting. I’m using a car washing sponge. Don’t stab your fingers, it hurts!
3-To cover the hands, I took a small piece of roving and started gently shaping it with the needle.
4-The more you stab the more firm your roving will get. I continued to wrap roving around and securing it with the felting needle until the pipe cleaner was covered and I had the shape of the body.

5-I added more roving around the head to round it out.
6-For the hair, I started with small strips of brown around the face and continued around until the head was covered.
7-Then I started wrapping green around the body for his jacket. Having formed the shape with the plain roving means that you only need small amounts of colored roving, which is more expensive, to add the details.
8-To start the hat, I stretched a small piece of blue across the head to make a crisp line across the hair and then continued to wrap and shape. Here I am using a tool that has five of the smallest felting needles to help me stabilize the blue roving. Throughout this process I switched back and forth from using one felting needle to the tool shown above.

9-Here I’m adding the finishing touches to the hat, using the edge of the sponge for leverage.
10-I took the tiniest pieces of blue roving to make the eyes, the finishing touch. Hello little gnome!

It took me about 3 hours after the kids had gone to bed to make this little guy. Violet has already informed me that she wants a purple one, of course! I’m excited about making more of these warm, fuzzy little characters for the kids to play with.

-Sally
Pollywog’s Cakewalk

Don’t miss all the yummy and fun Guest Posts this week!