Eco-friendly packaging for our creations

 

 

We have been looking for a way to display our felt creations in shops, and markets, which allows people to see the item and pick it up without getting it dirty. We had been using plastic sleeves designed for greeting cards. But this seemed like a waste.

Andrea spotted this blog post for eco-friendly packaging, made from plastic bottles. It doesn’t take long to turn an old plastic bottle into a gift box, and once it has been used the purchaser can recycle it as they would a normal bottle. Problem solved!

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Our new website FeltBuzz.com will be launched soon. You can like us on facebook, follow us on twitter or just come back here for more Humpbuckle Creations.

Also see our shops on Etsy and AlittleMarket

Have been busy with a Stop Frame animation film

I haven’t posted anything for a while, because I have been trying to complete a stop frame (or stop motion) animation film for my new website (feltbuzz.com: at the moment, the website is not up and running so this link will just take you back to this blog – I want to get the graphics done before launching the site). The most tedious bit is editing the photos before putting them together (so far I think I have spent about 6 hours doing this).

Anyway, I hope to finish tomorrow, so should have a rough film and a .gif to show you in the next few days (together with a ‘how I did it’ blog post). Here is one of the photos I have used in the film.

feltbuzzcom pic

How to create a posable needle-felted Game of Thrones style Dragon

This dragon can sit on your shoulder thanks to magnets in his feet and one in his tail

This dragon can sit on your shoulder thanks to magnets in his feet and one in his tail

Perhaps I need to get out much (there really isn’t a lot to do, of an evening, in winter in rural France), but once I got the idea of making a dragon that could sit on your shoulder like the one Khalissi has in Game of Thrones I couldn’ stop. Not entirely sure how many hours it took, but I made it over a week.

I first made a wire frame out of some electrical wire I had hanging about. I used a glue gun to fix the wire, where it connected with other bits of wire.P1080085

I then began the process of putting some “flesh” on the bones. I started by wrapping wool around the wire. I figured that this would make it easier when trying to needle-felt – give the wool something to hang onto!

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You can see in the above photo that I had also began to needle felt the head. It was then just a case of adding more wool and needle felting it until it began to look more like a dragon.

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Once I had built up the body I made some wet felted sheets for the wings. I used two different types of red and did three very fine layers (a bright red, sandwiched between two dark layers).

It was around this point I attached three magnets to the dragon. One on each foot, and one on the tip of his tail. I attached the magnets using a glue gun, and then needle-felted over them.

It was then a case of adding colour and detail until I was happy with it.

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Like our page on Facebook for more cool stuff. If you want to own a dragon why not email me?

If you like this you may want to check out our shops on Etsy and alittlemarket.com

Inspiration from others

Here is an example of how looking at other peoples work can make you think, and give you inspiration.

I recently saw this picture from Elemental Sight

I was really impressed with the needle felting, but also impressed that the owl had “a magnet up it’s butt” to help it sit on her shoulder.

I then saw this picture (I think it was sent to me by Pintrest as a “pin you’ll love” – I did)

And then suddenly another image leapt into my head:

Which then had me itching to do some more needle-felting. This is what I came up with (I was clearly surprised!):

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He has three magnets, one on each foot and one on his tail for stability. Will post more photos tomorrow of how it was done.

Humbuckle Creations Facebook page, Email me, or follow us on twitter @humpbuckle

Sherlock: a Needle-felted Finger Puppet

As a bit of fun I decided to try to create a needle-felted finger puppet based on Benedict Cumberbatch‘s interpretation of Sherlock Holmes.

It doesn’t look quite as much like him as I wanted (for some reason I think more of Alan Rickman’s Snape in Harry Potter, than I do of Sherlock, when I look at him! Or sometimes I see Stephen Fry! Do you see anyone else?), but it was fun, and I want to practice making human features, so in that sense it was a success.

The hair was difficult. I think it would be better not to have needle-felted it all, but perhaps to have used some Wensleydale wool, which may have given a better representation of Cumberbatch’s hair style.

Anyhoo, here are some photos showing the process of creating the little fellow:

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