Snail making instructions

A few years ago, I made alot of felt toys for my kiddos. I found a Waldorf inspired craft book that had a pattern for some really cute snails in it. Well, I was on a board that had alot of mamas on it also making felt toys for their kiddos and they were confused by the instructions in the book. So I made a set of detailed instructions. The book is called: Feltcraft by Petra Berger





Here are my instructions:

Materials
Pattern from Feltcraft by Petra Berger
wool felt or wool blend felt
pipe cleaner or thin wire
embroidery floss to match or compliment felt
card stock or scrap piece of cereal box or other thin cardboard
wool for stuffing



Tools
scissors
needle
bamboo skewer (or anything skinny with a blunt end to stuff the shell)

Hints
1. I cut the "horns" for the snail wider than the pattern. Basically double the thickness of the pattern. I've found it makes it easier to sew on.
2. Use scrap pieces of felt to cut out the horns.
3. I've found cereal boxes to be the best thing to use in the bottom of the snail body to ensure that it stays upright.
4. Using a bamboo skewer's blunt end to fill the shell was the best thing I found to stuff the shell.
5. I've found that stuffing the shell as you sew it is the easiest way to stuff it. Because of the small size of the shell, the wool tries to ball up before it gets where you want it.
6. The shells look good plain or decorated. You can do strips, dots, flowers, etc.
7. Shape the cardboard with a little notch for the neck, so that it makes the head of the snail look nicer. The pattern for the cardboard piece is not in the book but its well worth the effort to make yourself.



Instructions

Cut snail pattern out of felt.

The shell
*If you are going to decorate the shell with embroidery, then do so now.
*Take the embroidery floss you've chosen for the shell and cut a piece 36-42 inches long. Separate 3 pieces of the floss to use to sew up the snail body. Set aside the other to use later.
* Start at the small end of the shell. Fold over and begin sewing. Take the pipe cleaner and bend the tip so that when you stuff it into the shell, it won't poke through the stitching or felt. When you get about 1/2 inch - 1 inch down the long side, insert the pipecleaner.



Continue to sew and stuff with wool (using the bamboo skewer if needed) as you go all the way to the end of the long side. Before you get to the end, cut the pipecleaner to the same length as the felt & fold the tip over.



When you get to the end of the long side, start a running stitch



and pull the floss tight



and knot the floss.

Creating the shell's spiral
Take the piece of floss that you set aside earlier and begin to spiral the shell. To do this, fold over the tip of the shell, keeping the seams to one side (this will be the underside of the shell)



Take a couple of stitches to hold it in place.



Begin to spiral the shell. I found that if you come up through the part you've already folded and down into the new section that your spiraling



is the easiest way to sew it together. Oh and spiral which ever way is most comfortable to you. I had to do it backwards once because I did a directional print on the shell wrong and it was soooo awkward to sew.



When you get to the end of the shell sew down the gathered end.



Knot the floss and trim one of the floss "tails"





Body

Sew across the front of the head on the body and knot floss. Then sew the top seam starting from the head and stopping in the middle of the body where the shell will be and knot the floss.





Sew across the tail end of the body and knot. Insert the cardboard. Stuff the head portion of the body with wool. Start sewing up the tail from the tip of the tail to the middle of the body. After you get about 3/4 of an inch sewn, finish stuffing the body. Sew the hole closed and then knot. Trim the extra floss and you end up with this:



Attaching the body to the shell

Sew the shell onto the body using the floss that is still attached to the shell. You may have to shape the shell a little by pinching it to get it to site properly on the body. There is no real trick to sewing the shell on, so I didn't take any pictures. Just go in and out of the body, then go in and out of the shell, repeat all the way around the shell until the shell is firmly attached to the body. Knot and trim the floss.

The Horns

Take one of the horn pieces and fold the felt over. Sew up one small side and down the long side. Then sew onto the head.



Knot and trim the floss. Repeat with the other horn.

Now you have a snail!!!!!

Your snail options are unlimited!

Swaptree is soooo cool!!

Okay I'm a book nut. I confess. I really really really like to read. Well my husband told me about an online book trading site this summer. After we moved I decided to join. After all, I had a ton of books that I was thinking of selling but the local used book store doesn't give you much. I figured it would be nice to swap a book for a book and it only cost shipping. That's cheaper than buying them at the used book store, though not as cheap as buying them at goodwill or a garage sale. Anyhoo, I've traded tons of books and I've gotten books for just about every member in the family. They trade more than books, they trade dvds, cds, books, etc. But I'm only interested in the books, LOL.

Books are my other hobby besides crafting. Recently I've started replacing all of my favorite books with hardcover versions where I can, so I have even more books to get rid of on swaptree. I get packages almost everyday. Colin looks forward to the mail too, since I get alot of books for him also.

My little bit of Halloween this year.

I didn't go all out this year for Halloween. I just haven't gotten into my groove in the new house. I did, however decorate the living room. Usually I do a little bit in all of the public rooms of the house but I just limited it this year. I'll make more of an effort next year. So without further ado, ROFL...

Here are the only new apothecary items I made this year. More unicorn horns. I made them out of crayola clay. Colin made the one on the right. I added the details for him.



These are actually pretty easy to make. Take 2 pieces of clay that are about the same size, roll them out into a snake that has one end thicker than the other. Spiral them together and smush (a technical term) the thick ends together. For the texture, I used a blunt pencil and poked the thick end over and over to give a porous boney appearance. Then I used the side of a tapestry needle to give the horn some texture. I left any minor cracks in the clay for added texture.

We have built in bookcases on either side of our fireplace, so that is what I decorated this year with my apothecary/witch's kitchen stuff.

This is the left side of the fireplace:



This is the fireplace or what I like to call The Alter and The Owlery



This is the right side of the fireplace, my youngest son was watching Thomas the Tank engine, so ignore the nonHalloweeny tv show, LOL.



Here is a picture of this year's Halloween tree:



I decided to leave off the wizard's hat on the top of the tree/skull. I redid the garland yet again this year. The lights on the barb wire garland I made last year stopped working UGH!!! So I found this really cool faux chain at the dollar store and decided to use it for garland. I also added some rubber snakes to the tree this year. As for the garland from last year, I took it apart and used the barbed wire beneath the tree along with the tree skirt(a fleece halloween blanket), some black tulle, a strand of purple lights that did work and the gargoyles. On the other side of the tree I put all of the sewn pumkins but you can barely see them in the picture.

Here is a picture of one of the side tables in the living room:



Here are the "window treatments":



Here are some closeups of the bookcases:

Best laid plans...

Well I had grand plans to make 2 giant paper mache pumpkins for the front yard for this year's Halloween. The weather had other plans unfortunately. I have to make the pumpkins outside (because of the mess) and its just been too rainy. Oh well. I have a whole year to make pumpkins now, LOL. I have the shapes started, I need to add more layers to the forms the do the delicate work. On a plus note, we finally found our camera this weekend Woo Hoo!!!

I'll try to get a picture of this year's inside Halloween display up in the next few days. I haven't made anything new this year but I'll still put up the pictures. I did get the inside decorated. I only had 2 props leak from beoing packed and moved, it only added to the character of the bottles. So I think using shampoo and liquid soaps as the liquid for the bottles was a roaring success.

Well its past that time of year again....Halloween Planning

Its past time to start making stuff for Halloween. Since we just moved and our stuff is just finally starting to go where its supposed to, I haven't spent much time thinking about what we are going to decorate with. I've still got all of the stuff that I made last year, so that's no big. I've even found a few more owls recently to add to my Owlery. But this year, we are in a neighborhood so we get to think about the outside of the house as well as the inside. WooHoo!!!!

We aren't going to do a ton this year but I will be making stuff throughout the year for next year. I am, however, trying my hand at paper mache. In fact, I'm making large paper mache pumpkins. I've got 2 started now. I'm going to make them creepy looking. I'm so excited. I don't know what else we will make this year. But those 2 pumpkins are my only goals this year. Everything else is gravy. The best part about this project is that its extremely cheap. Your talking, newspaper (free if you ask your neighbors or coworkers if you don't get it yourself, its trash and this is recycling it), glue and/or liquid starch or flour, and water to make the pumpkin itself. Then you want paint to decorate it.

So here are some inspirations and technique info for making paper mache pumpkins and other stuff:

Stolloween has some great pumpkin advice and details....
http://www.stolloween.com/?page_id=67
His pumpkins look intimidating to make but if you really look through his directions, he breaks it down and give great advice. They are actually fairly easy, just time consuming.

Spooky Blue also gives some great information on making pumpkins and details for them....
http://www.spookyblue.com/halloween/giant-jackolantern/
These are spooky looking, but you could easily adapt the different techniques to make them not so spooky.

This site give a different idea using a real pumpkin as a mold to make paper mache pumpkins.
http://www.memoryelixir.com/props/pumpkin.html
I'm not overly fond of the directions but they show you basically how to make a mold out of a real pumpkin, which is informative.

Last but not least, here is a tutorial on how to make your own foam faux pumpkins.
http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/halloween/juggernaut/pumpkins/pumpkins-index.html
Just in case you just don't want to paper mache.

Don't forget you can make pumpkins out of balloons also. The ones I'm making now are using Stolloween's technique (sort of) of using trash bags and newspaper.

Moving woes

Well we bought a house and moved and are mostly settled in now. I've even been crafting, YEAH. So why am I not posting....I can't find my camera. Yep, its disappeared.

But atleast my crafting room is put together. I have A WHOLE ROOM now for crafting, woohoo!!!! While unpacking, I ran across an odd occurence. When you have to pack your stuff into, this and that because you don't have room, it tends to dissappear. When you move and have room to get organized, you find that you've bought 2, 3, 4 even 5 of the same things because you couldn't find what you were looking for when you got ready to craft and just went out and bought more . I had 5 things of red glitter.

As soon as I find my camera I'll take pictures. I've made covers for the kiddos new 18 oz. Klean Kanteens and some produce bags. I learned something valuable about the produce bags, don't make them too big or they will rip when they get too full of heavy stuff (like apples). Oh well. I'll fix the bag and won't make anymore that big or I'll add another layer of fabric. I made them out of tulle and pettiecoat netting (one layer of each).

UGH!!!

I know, I know, I said I would do better with updating this blog but I haven't done a whole lot of crafting lately. I did make one more dvd bag, but I've decided for now that the whole new years resolution in going out the window. We've decided to move and I've been busy with that. I did, however, make the kiddos' teacher, aides and bus drivers presents at the end of school. Unfortunately I didn't get pictures of any of it. I painted sayings on ready made canvas bags for them. For the teachers and aides (5 total), I quoted Dr. Seuss's The Lorax:

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It's not. (If that's not the direct quote its darn close, LOL, I've already packed the book so I can't quote it exactly)

For the bus drivers and aides (3) I simply wrote: Bus Ladies are Cool! I was going to paint the Dr. Seuss quote for them as well, but after painting it 5 times before, my hands were tired. I kinda put off making the gifts for lack of inspiration. I didn't start them until the Sunday before school let out.

We have been steadily looking for houses and we finally found one. We are moving into town, woohoo. When we bought our current house, we didn't realize just how isolated we would be. It will be nice to be around people on a regular basis again. It will also be nice to have our kiddos in better schools. We've lucked out so far with their teachers and such but we felt it was better to move now. I think the whole family is excited about the move. I know I am.

Oh but here are the pictures of the Easter Chickens I made this year. I made pompon chicks to go inside the eggs. I made them for a friend at Gavin's speech.

My New Years Resolution

Well it seems every year for the past few years, I have the best of intentions to make cloth giftbags and wrap for Christmas and Birthdays. I never seem to get around to it. So that is my New Years Resolution..... to make at least 50 cloth gift bags and/or cloth wraps this year for my own personal use. I'm also thinking of making so to sell, so you see why I put that last bit in. Well I've gotten a good start this year. See what I have done already.

Here are 1-8 of the the 50 I'm making. Yep I've been a busy bee.

The first 4 are Media Gift bags that can hold dvd's/Wii games/Playstation games/books/etc. I'm still tweaking my pattern but I think I've almost got it perfected. I'm hoping to sell both bags and possibly the pattern to make the bags soon. I think I'll have it for sale soon. I'm still trying to write the directions, tweak the pattern, etc.

Anyway here are the first 3 in Christmas fabric:



This next one is another Media gift bag that I made especially for my neice. Her birthday was this month and we got her a game for her Wii so I had to make a gift bag for it, LOL. I think this one is my favorite that I've made to date.



The next 4 gift bags were made on my circular knitting looms. I made them using different size looms (I have a set of 4 looms) and made them to different lengths. I think they turned out fabulous, LOL. I made them using Yarn Bee "Airy" yarn. The results are awesome and I love how they sparkle.

The first 2 are my "Santa" bags. I made them out of traditional red and white and I just LOVE how they turned out. I used the same sized loom for both (the 2nd smallest loom) but I made one longer than the other.



The last 2 are my tribute to Dr. Suess bags, LOL. When I saw these 2 colors together I just had to make a couple of gift bags out of them. The small one is made using my smallest loom and it makes the perfect bag for wine bottles and smaller items. The larger bag was made with my second largest loom and took a while to make. I think the results speak for themselves....

Christmas Coaster

This year, for Christmas, I made coasters Teacher/Aide/Bus Driver appreciation gifts. I didn't get a chance to take pictures of them. I ended up making a total of 28 of them for my kiddos to give to their Teachers, Bus Drivers (and Gavin's Aides). They turned out awesome, so I ended up making myself some as well. Here is a picture of the ones I made for myself.



I think they turned out awesome and I believe they were well received.

Christmas presents

I didn't make a whole lot of presents this year but I did paint some shopping bags I bought premade. Actually they are more the size of book bags than shopping bags, but I didn't realize that when I bought them.

I made this one for Nana:



I made one for Pawpaw too, but I didn't get a picture of it.

I made this one for mom for her birthday. It said Baaa! on the other side. She plays a lot of World of Warcraft so I thought I'd make something for her that tied into that:



This one is my favorite. I made it for a friend who works at Walmart. I found the cartoon in a newpaper a while ago and had it on my frig. He saw it and liked it so I thought I'd paint it for him. I think it turned out awesome and I found out later that he really likes Pinky and the Brain (what's not to like about mice trying to take over the world, LOL):



Another friend of mine is a penquin collector and teacher so I thought I'd make her a penguin bag. Here is one side:



Here is the other:



I thought it was appropriate.