my anatomically “correct” heart pocket

We are making “Monster Balls” at Sew Crafty January 29th!     Sign up here

Not in Houston?  monster ball kits!

I’m Dyeing mounds wool for Hands on Houston at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft this weekend. We’re making acorns! Saturday October 2, 2010 from 11am-3pm

I threw this guy in for fun.

BEFORE

AFTER:

click on baby dino for tutorial!

Originally uploaded by Licorice Tree / Tobiah P. Mundt

i started making this guy on friday… i thought he looked a little rodent like so went to the pet store and bought him a toy for inspiration.

he needed a rodent like tail, so i lightly felted a long piece of wool.

i wanted to get cartoon like ribbing on the tail and but needle felting each “rib” would have taken a very long time and i am sure i would have stabbed myself repeatedly.  so i put rubber bands down the length of the tail, wet felted it, let it dry and then dyed it pink.

the tail did’nt come out exactly how i envisioned it, but i do love it.i added wire before i attached it so it would be posable.  awww, my new pet monster with his toy! but he still needs a name…any suggestions?

what does one do when there is no power for 2 days?   well, you craft of course…and then you clean your craft room.  lucie is a needle felted puppet that i never finished because there was always something about her that i didnt like…her face, her mouth…her ears.

then along came hurricane ike and a desperate need for another battery operated light source. i rummaged through my unorganized craft room, found some lamp parts and then i spied lucie!

lucie was needle felted hollow because she was intended to be a puppet—perfect for a lampshade.

i wanted to spruce her up so that once all went dark she would be pretty to look at so i gave her a felt rose for her hair, eyelashes and teeth.

lucie giving me light to sketch by  + a guitar playing husband made having no power not so bad.

Meet Kiyoshi 淳!

last week i set out to needle felt a bat with wings made with umbrella parts. his wings turned out better than i thought they would because they have a full range of motion despite the wool. when i was almost done felting him,i decided to try a cabbage dye to give him a blue-ish grey color.

FIRST i chopped up some pretty red cabbage

i let it boil for an hour and drained it. i didn’t want to use alum to set the dye, so i added vinegar to the cabbage water and the color instantly turned from a deep blue to a bright pink.

i added mr. batty.

he was very pink and looked very unhappy. i let him boil for 5 minutes.

‘mmm smell that cabbagey, wooly bat soup.

thankfully, once i rinsed him there was no smell cabbagey smell at all but he was drab – very drab.

not at all the pretty blue-grey that i was going for.

in order to save mr. batty from his drabness, i mixed blue raspberry kool aid and black cherry kool aid until i got a very deep blue. i closed my eyes, hoping this would help and not hinder mr. batty’s color situation, and dunked him in the pot of blue.  i boiled him for about 20 minutes to let the dye set and woila! the perfect shade of muted purple i love it!

i hand dried him with a blow dryer so that the metal umbrella parts would dry quickly then i lightly needle felted him all over to tighten up the loose wool.  this morning i made him some socks and freckles and gave him a name…

淳

Kiyoshi which means the quiet one in Japanese.

]]> http://underthelicoricetree.com/2008/09/08/kiyoshi-%e6%b7%b3-needle-felted-umbrella-bat/feed/ 12 licorice tree http://underthelicoricetree.com/2008/09/04/batty/ http://underthelicoricetree.com/2008/09/04/batty/#comments Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:50:48 +0000 tobiah p. mundt http://licoricetree.wordpress.com/?p=137 ]]> i went a little batty yesterday when i got sick of making sugar foots. i have been wanting to make a bat for a while now, but i wasn’t sure how i would approach it.

should he be sweet or mean? white, black or some random color? i still don’t know.

i did know that i wanted to use umbrella parts for the wings so they would open and close, so i went to the dollar store, got an umbrella and took it apart.

then i searched flickr for some plush bat inspiration.

i have looove sotosofties work, especially her bats, like freddie here.

and jennybubbletime’s shy looking guy is adorable.

okay. all inspired.

i’m gonna make him a little mean and a little sweet.  i found this sketch i did a few weeks ago.

not sure if i want to go for the realistic bat nose.

the dollar store umbrella was way to easy to take apart. it would not have lasted 5 minutes in a storm.

i pulled a bear head out of the pile of the unfinished, cut his ears off and got to felting a body. i really just wanted to get to the wings.

looks like a bat to me.

i just started wrapping and felting…

and here is my progress so far…

i broke out my small toaster oven that i have not used since moving a year ago and wrote on the top in large permanent letters: CRAFT OVEN ONLY so not to poison toast lovers that may be tempted to use it. i set it outside, of course, and got to sculpting feet and teeth. i wanted donny to be eating a chicken foot, but i don’t do well felting small objects so i decided to make a human foot out of polymer clay for him. i started off using gloves (so the phtalates wouldn’t get me) but threw them out as soon as i started blending browns to get a brown that would match my skin color. three feet later i made the perfect foot for donny and threw it in my outdoors craft oven while holding my breath( so the phtalates wouldn’t get me). i ran inside and sat by the window and watch for smoke. fifteen minutes later the foot was born and donny got his personality.

i searched for a tiny bottle of ketchup…but the tabasco works better, i think.

my sister would like me to remove his nipples, but bunnies have nipples too!