Don't You Dare As Cute As Me! I'm A Guinea-pig.

Chocho, the Guinea-pig is a new friend here, everyone loves his cute looking, soft and chunky body. But Chocho here is to tell people he is absolutely one of the top friends to people to keep accompany with. Chocho loves lying on your stomach while you are reading on your couch. Don't worry, he will never eat your Twilight of limited edition like a mouse usually do. Ok, are you ready to make a new friend for yourself?

Step one: Take some white wool, roll it into a ball. Then, use your felting needles to poke it repeatedly until it becomes an egg-shape body.

Step two: Take a small amount of light brown wool and roll it in to four mini balls as his feet. Attach the four balls on the body shape and poke each of their bottom to fasten them on the surface of the body. Like so. 

Step three: Take some brown and black or yellow wool if you like to your guinea pig pattern by needling in different spot shapes and sizes on the back and head area. The amount and shape are up to you. Just make it natural.

Step four: Take some black wool and roll it into a mini ball as his nose. Poke it on one end of the egg-shape body.

Step five: Use white wool make two balls as his eyes. You can make one bigger than the other. Use a tiny amount of black wool as the pupils. I like to poke them in to the center. But you can change the position to change the expression.

Step six: Take a small amount of brown wool, roll it and poke it on your foam block or any soft surface like wool pad. This time, you need to make two semicircular ears. Be aware of using felting needle when you dealing with small amount of wool. 

Step seven: Poke the bottom of the ears on the back apart and behind the eyes. 

Tada~! He's ready to lie on your stomach! Let's be the best friends to each other!

How To Felt Basic Shapes?

As you start to make basic shape for your buddy's body or head, you must learn to sculpt your wool into any shape you want by using felting needles. When you start it, you will see how easy it is to work with felt. The more time you poke on a certain area, the tighter the area is going to be. That also means this area will look sunken when it compared with its surround areas. So it is a basic and the most important skill to learn in the felting art. You will find you usually spend 1 hour to felt a firm and perfect shape you want. 

The process of felting a basic body shape is right here. You will use it in almost all the projects for your toys. Go back to this page anytime you need a refresher.

1. Take certain amount of wool and roll it.

2. Use your hands to roll the wool tightly. The tighter, the easier and faster you will spend in the next step. Because the tighter, the more of the shape that your needle will pass through at once.

3. Place the wool piece on your felting foam block, or other softer surface like wool mat. Poke repeatedly into the wool. You will find you averagely poke a thousand time for a firm perfect body shape by using 2 felting needles. 

4. Multi-needle tool is your best friend to help you speed up the felting process. 

5. Continue felting the wool until the shape is been evenly poked and round. To make it even, you don't have to poke deeply each time, just find the right strength you need to make it even. Like what I said use the felting needle to sculpt the shape you want.

Faster And More Comfortable Than Ever!

      Remember the secret tool for felting? Yes, felting needles. It usually take me 15~20 minutes to felt an egg sized wool penguin by using only two felting needles. In fact, it takes fewer minutes if I use handheld needle felting tool with multiple needles! Why? Because it's more comfortable and faster. Just like the wooden handled tools in the above picture. However, you have to know it is impossible to use the multiple needle tool from the beginning to the end unless you are felting a wool pat. The truth is you need both multiple needle tool the and single one every time, because what you are felting is vivid animals that has subtle characters needs to be done by single felting only. For example, the eyes and mouth of the penguin. The less needles you use, the more elaborate for targeting a certain small part of your work. 
      Multiple needles tool isn't necessary for every work, but  it will definitely save your time when doing less detailed work on a larger surface of the buddy. For instance, it takes only 5 minutes to create a body base for your penguin, yet takes more than 10 minutes when you use single or 2 needles. So, trust me, you will certainly love it when you deal with something bigger.

    

Recommendation Of The Felting Book!

      

There are so many felting books in the market, and if you are a very beginner, you might get lost in those various books or waste a lot of time on picking the best one. WOOLBUDDIES (20 Irresistibly simple needle felting projects) is the one I want to recommend at here, it's written by Jackie Huang. It introduces from raw materials and tools to challenging wool buddies.  It's a wonderful choice for beginners! Actually, it still can be an inspirational book if you are an ace of felting. 

Although everyone may has a different taste, the book above is favorite one for making wool animals or pets.  It's up to you, some people just like buddies with true-life looking. But for me, this book is totally my style. In other words, I love my buddies look cute and, to some extent, awkward and stupid. Why? For two reason. I want them creative and reflect their cutest side from our heart within. And, they are made for relaxing our mind. For my own experience, they make me feel relaxed and so happy when every time I completed one of them. If you keep following me, you will find my buddies will keep cute, stupid and creative. Ahaha~~

You can easily new one or used book from Amazon, which allows you to preview some pages of it. Check it out first, then you will decide weather you like it.