DIY Cute Pumpkins for Halloween

We will felt a few cute pumpkins for Halloween. Our pumpkins could be great gifts for friends and family. They will look wonderful in your living room or your kitchen as signs of beautiful Autumn and approaching Halloween.



We will need some orange felting wool, a glass of water and a piece of soap, black thread and a needle. We will felt our pumpkins with water and soap so it makes sense to do it on surfaces that don't get damaged by water. A kitchen table should be a good place once it's covered with a water resistant tablecloth. You won't need too much space. The amount of water you will use is minimal.



Take a piece of orange wool and form a ball in your hands. Water your wool and add some soap to it. Now gently squeeze the piece of wool a few times. Start rolling it between your palms. Keep rolling for 5 to 10 minutes adding water and soap if needed.



Once your ball has become somewhat firm and solid rinse it well and let it dry. The goal is to make the ball not too firm so that you will be able to get a needle through it once it's dry.



Once your orange ball is dry it's time to turn it into a pumpkin. Take a black thread and a needle. Start in the middle of the orange ball adding loops around it. Six loops should be OK. At the end it makes sense to add an extra loop to serve as a hanging thread.



It's an easy DIY project that produces a great result. You will have bright and cute pumpkins made of natural materials. They could serve as small Halloween gifts for your friends.

DIY How to make Halloween black cat felted coasters

It is so much fun to decorate your home for Halloween. If you have children it is even more fun as they usually love Halloween and craft projects that go with it. I have come up with an idea of making Halloween themed glass coasters. I already tried scary pumpkins. This time around I'll put a black cat on my coasters.



To make felted wool coasters we will need white, black and orange felting wool, water, soap and bubble wrap plastic paper.

On a piece of bubble wrap plastic paper arrange pieces of white felting wool so that they form a circle. You can put one layer of wool for future coasters to be thin or a few layers for them to be thicker. Don't forget that wool will shrink by about 30%. Depending on the size of future coasters add 30% to their original size.



Once the white circle is there start working on a black cat. Let one piece of black wool be the cat's tail, another - its back. Form a circle out of black wool and make the cat's head. Decorate your cat with additional features like orange eyes, whiskers made of black thread, etc. Use your imagination to make your cat funny, scary or cute! It's important you arrange all the details carefully so that they don't mix up later on.



Once the cat is ready start felting. To felt add soapy water and cover the wool with another layer of bubbled wrap paper. Make sure the original image of the black cat stays as much intact as possible. Start carefully rubbing the plastic paper. Felting shouldn't take long. Once all the wool fibers attach to each other the coaster is ready.



Rinse your coasters well and let them dry overnight. If you wish to make more that one coaster keep in mind that it's almost impossible to completely replicate your original image. You can more or less follow the steps of replicating your original design but at the end all cats will look different. If you love handmade and are ready for all your cats to look special and different go for it!

DIY How to make felted Halloween coaters

Since we moved to US Halloween has become one of our favorite holidays. It's so much fun to dress up, decorate our home and invite guests on Halloween. As usual we will make a few Halloween family projects to decorate our house.

I would like to share a simple project that could be accomplished either by one person or a whole family. This time we will make Halloween themed pumpkin coasters that will add color to our house and make it ready for the holidays. Children will no doubt have fun making funny pumpkins with scary faces.



We will need white and black felting wool, water, soap and bubbled wrap paper. If you have orange felting wool it's even better as in that case we won't have to dye it.



To start our project we have to lay down pieces of white (orange) wool on a large piece of bubbled wrap paper. Bubbles on the paper should face up. In order for our coasters to be round we should try to form a circle out of our pieces of wool. As a result of felting our wool will shrink by about 30%. Keep it in mind! We will have to make our circles about 30% larger than the original size we want them to be. We can put as many layers of wool as we want. More layers are there thicker the coasters will be.



With pieces of black wool we form a small circle and place it on our white wool. It will be our pumpkin's eye. It's time to unleash your creativity! You can make your pumpkin look funny, happy or scary by making eyes of different shapes and sizes. The same is true for a mouth. We can make it happy or sad.

As soon as the pumpkin's face is ready we can carefully wet and soap it. Make sure the face expression doesn't alter or we will not be able to fix it later. Once the wool is wet we can start felting by rubbing the paper. In the process of felting individual wool fibers will adhere forming a firm piece. We continue felting adding water and soap as needed. The process is completed when individual wool fibers are stuck and we are unable to separate them. It's time to rinse our project and let it dry.



If you originally used white wool it's time to dye it in orange so that our pumpkin looks like a true Halloween creature! To dye our coaster I used orange KoolAid. In a plastic tray suitable for use in a microwave I mixed water and orange KoolAid. I put my white coaster in the orange solution and kept it in the microwave until it boiled. Be careful handling the tray as it's very hot! Your coaster now is nice and orange. Let it cool and when it's cool rinse it and let it dry. Your orange pumpkin coaster is ready!

Orange poppy seed cake recipe

While living in New York City we became huge fans of Sweet Melissa cafe located in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. It turns out there is a book that has all the recipes of the amazing pastry we used to eat in Sweet Melissa. We couldn't resist buying the book. My husband Andrei is an avid baker. The first recipe from the book he tried was orange poppy seed cake. Coming from Eastern Europe we love pastry with poppy seeds!

To bake the cake we will need:
1 whole orange; 1 cup of sugar; 3 eggs; 12 tablespoons (1 and 1/2 sticks) of welted unsalted butter; 1 and 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour; 2 and 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder; 3/4 teaspoons of salt; 1 tablespoon of poppy seeds

After we bake the cake we will cover it in a glaze. To make the glaze we will need:
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice; 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice; 1/4 cup sugar

We start with cutting an orange into pieces and removing the stem. In a bowl mix the orange (skin and pulp) pieces with 1/2 cup of sugar until pureed. Make sure no large pieces of orange remain.

In a large bowl whisk together the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and eggs then add the orange puree and the melted butter. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and poppy seeds. Gently combine both mixtures.

Preheat your oven to 350F.

Pour the mixture into the loaf pan. Bake for 50 - 60 minutes until a wooden skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. Remove from the pan and let the cake cool.

For the glaze simmer orange juice, lemon juice and sugar in a small saucepan for about 3 minutes. With a pastry brush apply the hot glaze over the cake while the cake is still a bit warm.

Enjoy!

Felted flower brooch in peach orange

I continue experimenting with coloring. My favorite coloring solution these days is KoolAid that comes in a few bright colors. I've created my flower brooch hand felting white wool and coloring it with orange KoolAid. The color is very intense and beautiful! Because I color every layer of the brooch separately I can control the process and apply as much color as I think is necessary for each layer. The idea is to apply maximum color to the center of each layer leaving the edges uncolored. It adds volume to the flower and makes every brooch look different and unique. On top of that the brooch smells of oranges and makes me think of spring and summer!

Bright tangerine summer swing earrings

I believe that summer is all about bright and vivid colors. I created my new hand felted earrings of wool in tangerine, carrot and ginger colors. Deep blue beads serve as additional decoration and metal chain let my beads swing freely around the owner's neck. The earrings are of that happy orange color that lifts one's attitudes and helps a person live happily through a day!

How to color wool with KoolAid

A few of my friends recently told me that they are experimenting with different artificial colorings easily available in grocery stores. What we all are looking for is a coloring that would be inexpensive, reliable and not too harmful. The new favorite in the felting community is KoolAid that could be found in any grocery store in US. I bought a few small packs of different colors to try it out.

To experiment with KoolAid coloring we will need to create wool felted beads first. To read about how to create ones you can go to my previous post on how to create wool acorns.

To make colored water I added powder from KoolAid packs to water in a few small plastic containers. As a result I got five containers with brightly colored water. I added approximately a tea spoon of powder to every container. Then I put each of my five beads into a separate container and let the beads suck in the colored water.

It makes sense to heat containers with water and beads in a microwave for color to fully penetrate the beads. I microwaved my containers for approximately 3 minutes. I didn't want to boil my beads but might experiment with boiling next time.

The result is pretty impressive. All of my five beads turned out to be colored differently. The most intensive, bright and beautiful color turned out to be orange. Yellow bead was not that intensely colored but I really like the light lemon color of the bead. The cherry color turned out to be very intense and vivid as well. In general all the beads have vivid and bright colors as a result of coloring. They smell of oranges, lemons and cherries!
It's definitely worth experimenting with this powder as theoretically one could mix different colors and get some interesting results. My only advice is to wear rubber gloves as it will be very hard to get the color off your hands once it gets there!

This post describes my personal experience with a particular product.
Please be careful trying to replicate the experiment!!!

Hand felted wool flower brooches

I discovered a few really cute buttons in a store and bought them without any particular purpose. They were so lovely that I just desperately wanted to attach them somewhere. Finally I found a place that fits them perfectly. Hand felted flower brooches with multiple layers of felt in different colors look nice with a large vivid spot in the middle. That's where my buttons belong from now on.
The key is to match the color of a button with a color of the felt flower. It's hard to find nice looking buttons but relativery easy to buy wool of diffferent colors and types. So here is the rule: Start with the button!

Flowers in lilac and purple

Flowers are beautiful. They are so fragile and exquisite! Every flower is different and there is no way one can find two similar ones! They come in different colors and shapes. It's amazing how creative nature can be! My favorite Fall flower colors this season are lilac, purple and yellow.
Fall colors tend to be warm.
They remind us of the last sunny days before winter strikes. This feast of colors is our last chance to picture all these yellow, purple, red shades and hues before we enter a monochrome world of winter.
Don't forget about animals, insects and birds of the sunny Summer and Fall days! Some of them are as vivid as any flower or brightly colored Fall leaf. Some damselflies, dragonflies and butterflies remind us of flowers and some look more like exotic aliens from different planets but they all add beauty to our everyday life.

Halloween countdown gifts on Etsy

It's Halloween countdown and we already started decorating our house for the upcoming holiday. My kids are very excited and a bit frightened by all the spiders and witches hanging on our neighbors' doors. It's a lovely holiday and so much fun for both kids and grown-ups. I picked up a few nice Halloween gift and decoration ideas on Etsy to share with everyone looking forward to this great holiday!

I featured the following wonderful Etsy artists in my collection:
CheekieBottoms, FleetingStillness, KarisaGraphic, YuliaKazansky, TonyaUtkina, bumblestore, honeypunk1, TomBjornDesigns, FineEmbroidery, ArtHarmony, socksandmittens, CityCrochet, cushyadornments, katrinshine, graphicland, CuffeShop

Happy Halloween findings on Etsy

I just created a Happy Halloween collection featuring bright orange Etsy findings. It's amazing how many wonderful pieces are created and sold on Etsy every day! It took me some time to locate these favorites as there are so many great items to choose from! My children love Halloween. I suspect they love it more than Christmas. Although I doubt if it's possible! Ok! They love Halloween at least as much as they love Christmas! So here is my tribute to Halloween!


I featured the following great Etsians in the Happy Halloween treasury:
MyWayToSay, FleetingStillness, graphicland, SilkMagic, bumblestore, Oksa, VitalTemptation, TomBjornDesigns, Beautyland, CuffeShop, FineEmbroidery, katrinshine, KarisaGraphic, cushyadornments, CityCrochet, herbolution

Candy earrings in amber gold

I like sunny bright colors and items! Golden, amber, yellow and orange are my favorites at the moment! I created these earrings of high quality amber colored Czech glass and silver plated wire. Large beads look like candy that shines and glistens in the sun making earrings very pretty. Their simple and minimalist design will go well with bright and vivid summer dresses and will add color to any business casual outfit.