Felt Making with Children

Children love felt making! There's something magical about taking these fluffy bits of wool and turning them into a beautiful piece of art using just your hands, water and a bit of soap.

When I entered the world of felt making 3 years ago, I immediately saw the benefits of teaching it to children. Since then, I've taught over 1000 children how to make felt and, I can honestly say, they all loved it!

So, what is it about felt making that children love? 

First, they love the slightly messy nature of it - using water and creating bubbles with the soap (and yes, I encourage bubble making competitions!) are just downright fun. Somehow, they don't realise it's messy in a clean way and I certainly send them away with squeaky clean hands.

They love 'Milking' the felt, a technique used to squeeze water out and give it an extra 'felt'. The action is like milking a cow and they can't get enough of it.

They experience success! It really doesn't matter how old you are what your ability is, everyone can make felt. Children quickly realise this and just revel in creating a piece of art. Older children work from photographs and this can be challenging but, with a little encouragement and support, they're proud of what they've created.

They learn! Contrary to popular belief, children love learning. Felt making offers so many opportunities for children to learn. Of course, there are the many aspects of art and design to learn about but I also teach children science, maths and geography during my workshops and they enjoy it. 

The awe and wonder children experience during felt making is amazing and, as a teacher, I love seeing it and encouraging their creativity, allowing them to explore a new medium and to play, to discover and most of all to enjoy. 

If you'd like to try felt making with your children, then check out my website, www.felt-ed.co.uk for details of my monthly kit club, artist in residence work with schools and resources for teachers. 

Bonfire Night Art for Children (and a writing idea to!)

Halloween has passed so that means that Bonfire Night is nearly here. For me, this is the highlight of autumn and signals the start of wrapping up warm with chunky knitwear, mugs of steaming hot chocolate and the consuming of warm, delicious food.

Bonfire night also offers the opportunity to create some amazing art work and I've shared a few ideas with you below that you can try with your children.  Begin by looking at images, or watching a short video about Bonfire night to gather fabulous ideas.

Scratch Art Picture

I remember creating these when I was a child and the great fun I had colouring the page in using crayons, painting over it in black, acrylic paint, waiting for what seemed like forever for it to dry before using a cocktail stick (or anything else I could find) to scratch away the black to reveal the pretty colours underneath. Now times have moved on and you can buy ready made scratch art sheets if you're short on time but I still think the original way is far more fun! 

Check out this great tutorial here.

Printing with Found Objects

I love printing and have a basket full of 'found objects' to use - from bottle tops to Lego, sponges to old credit cards, everything can be used in one way or another. 

You'll need some strong sugar paper (construction paper) and paint in your chosen colours. Grab your objects and get printing to create your picture. Encourage your children to think about the shapes they want to create and to choose their objects carefully. Here are a few ideas:

Wooden blocks, old credit cards - great logs on a bonfire 

Bottle tops, old credit cards, Pom poms - fabulous fireworks 

Old credit cards, pieces of card - sparklers

I found this great tutorial on creating a printing tool using pipe cleaners which makes awesome fireworks. 

Blow Painting

A lot of fun can be had with a straw and some watered down paint! 

Mix a little non-toxic paint with some water, place a blob on the paper and then, using a straw, blow on the paint to spread it out. It makes fabulous firework shapes. Just be careful to make sure no one sucks through the straw! 

Writing a Bonfire Night Poem

Not only are these great art activities, they can also be a fantastic stimulus for inspiring creative writing. The sights, smells and noises of the night really lend themselves to writing poetry, Here's 1 activity for you. 

1) During the art activity, discuss WOW Words you can use to describe Bonfire Night - base this on your senses, what can you see, hear, smell and feel. Record them on sticky notes to refer back to later.

2) Read a firework poem with your class (this one from Scholastic would be a good place to start but you can choose your own). Identify the WOW words in it and discuss its structure and any other poetic features such as rhyming.  

3) Begin by modelling writing a poem together, using your own ideas and the children's to create your class poem (or even just the start of one) Remember to discuss outloud your writing process as this really helps children when writing independently.

4) Allow the children to write their own poem or, if you just wrote the beginning together, to continue the writing you've started. 

5) Once complete, share your poems with others - this could be verbally or even via the Internet. Display your 2 pieces of creative work together for everyone to admire and enjoy! 

Felt-Ed Kit Club 2016

I'm so excited to be talking to you about my felt kit club.  I've been planning it for months and finally I'm ready to launch! To be honest, it sometimes felt like I was never going to be ready but I'm so pleased to be able to tell you that I am!

I love making felt and I want to share it with everyone - in fact, I'd love to teach the world to felt! It's such an amazing art form and anyone can do it regardless of age or ability. The kit club is a great way to learn how to make felt whilst creating 12 fabulous projects throughout 2016.

When you sign up, you'll receive a basic felting kit complete with a small bamboo mat, bubble wrap, a spray bottle, soap and a bag to keep it all in then, every month, you'll receive a kit with everything you need, including a link to a video tutorial, to create a great project. 

Each kit is a surprise you can be certain you will love it just as much as I do and they're suitable for children and adults alike! They make a great Christmas gift, or a little treat for yourself! 

Sign ups launch on Friday 6th November at 9am and to make sure you don't miss out you need to sign up to my mailing list using the link on the right hand side of this page (there might even be a little discount code when reminder goes out!) 

5 Spooky Halloween Crafts for Kids

Halloween is just around the corner and so is the opportunity for some spooky themed crafts.

I've picked 5 of my favourite to share with you today.

Witchy Owl

I just adore these little pine cone owl witches and they'd look so cute all lined up on a shelf or window sill. Go out and collect some pine cones then take card, or felt, and create their eyes, beak and of course their little hat.

Check out the tutorial to make these here.

Glittery Wizard Wand

Being a huge Harry Potter fan, I just couldn't resist this tutorial for glittery wands. Collect some sticks on your autumn walks, cover them in glue and add piles of glitter. Once dry, spend the rest of the day practising your best spells.

Tutorial available here.

Witches Hats Good Enough to Eat

How great would these hats look at a party? Create some delicious witches hats using ice cream cones, biscuits chocolate and sweeties then enjoy eating them in half the time. 

You can check out the tutorial here.

Paper Plate Spiders

Dangle these around your house to create a creepy Halloween vibe. You just need paper plates, paint, pipe cleaners and googly eyes to make them. Why not create a whole family of spiders in different colours?

Find the tutorial here

Wooden Spoon Mummies

I've taught a few children's workshops on how to make these and they're so easy to. 

You will need: wooden spoons, long white pipe cleaners, bandages, glue and a black marker pen. 

1. Begin by drawing eyes on your wooden spoon using the marker pen.

2. Next, wrap the pipe cleaner round the handle of the spoon to create arms. 

3. Then begin wrapping your bandage round your spoon, starting with the handle, and covering the whole spoon and arms. Once it's all covered, secure the end of the bandage with a bit of glue.

4. Enjoy scaring everyone with your mummy! 

Autumn Art and Crafts

I love autumn! The crisp days, wrapping up warm in a snuggly scarf and admiring the beautiful colours nature brings us.

Leaves are just so luscious at this time of year and I'm always amazed by the range of colours you can see on one tree. From bright oranges to deep reds, there's plenty to inspire you.

A walk through the fallen leaves, listening to them crunch under your boots, is a great way to enjoy the season and an opportunity to collect some specimens for these awesome autumn crafts which explore shape, texture and colour as well as hitting some maths, English and science objectives on the way. 

Leaf Rubbings

I love this tutorial from EDventures!  Create beautiful leaf rubbings which allow you to explore texture, colour and the different parts of a leaf. Dry your leaves, grab some waxed paper and crayons and take beautiful rubbings of your leaves.

Leaf Printing

Once you've taken your rubbings, try your hand at printing with the leaves. Using the different shapes, create patterns. Identify repetition in pattern and colour to create a beautiful work of art. Create a picture where the leaves are printed from smallest to largest or vice versa.

Leaf Bunting

What could look more beautiful than your own autumn leaf bunting? Another opportunity to create patterns with your leaves and to explore repetition through both shape and colour or order your bunting by size or by the number of points on each leaf. 

ArtfulParent writes a great tutorial on how to do this with waxed paper but this would work really well with sticky back plastic or laminating pouches! 

Leaf Identification Book

Create an identification book using the leaves you've collected on your walk. 

For younger children, glue the leaves into the book and record the names of each leaf underneath. Older children can make observed sketches of the leaves, studying them closely, and write a more detailed description of the leaf and the tree from which it came. 

This leaf identifier from the BBC is a great way to get started. 

Have lots of fun exploring these autumn activities and tell me all about them in the comments below or on my Facebook Page!

What is felt?

Simply put, felt is a fabric.  It can be both soft and hard, flat or sculptural, it can be made in a variety of ways and produce a wide range of items.  It is marvellous and I just adore making it.

When I made my first ever piece of felt on day 1 of the Foundation Felt course at Artybird Carnforth, my tutor, Kate, told us that by the end of the year we wouldn't know how to make felt, and she was right!  In that first year, I learnt so many ways to create it that I didn't know just 1 way but a wide range of techniques to create different types of felt, using different types of fibre and for a range of different purposes.

Felt is predominantly made using wool (although other fibres can be used depending on your technique).  There are hundreds of different breeds of sheep in the World, each producing fibre with different characteristics and therefore requiring different techniques to felt.  

There are 2 main ways to make felt:  wet felting and needle felting.  

Wet felting uses water, soap and agitation to create a felted fabric whereas needle felting uses a barbed needle to stab and mesh the fibres together. I'm not going to go into detail here about how each technique works, we'll save that for another post!

Felt is an amazing textile to create and work with and holds so many possibilities for creating pictures, sculptures and everyday items and I never tire of making it.


If you enjoyed reading this post, then you can sign up to my mailing list here to keep up-to-date with the latest Felt-Ed news.

Why Should Children Visit Art Galleries?

   Picture courtesy of Robert Wallace via Flickr 

I just love a visit to see an art gallery or an exhibition so on Saturday I went up to the Platform Gallery in Clitheroe to view a felt exhibition, Black Sheep:The Darker Side of Felt. It's not the first exhibition of felt work I've seen, in fact it was seeing and viewing felt art in the flesh that inspired me to learn felt making in the first place. 

It was by far the most 'alternative' felt work I've seen; from needle felted skeletons to felt interpretations of the 7 deadly sins, it was definitley a thought provoking body of work. As with any exhibition, there were pieces I loved, in particular an enormous wall hanging that reminded me of jelly fish. 

One aspect of the exhibition I particularly liked were the handling tables piled high with felted objects to pick up and feel - a fabulous idea as felt is a particularly tactile art form that I find I just want to touch and feel and I could see how children would be straight in there feeling everything (because that's exactly what I did!)

It got me thinking about taking children to art galleries to view exhibitions. Last year, artist Jake Chapman was quoted as saying that taking children to galleries was a 'total waste if time' (you can read the article from the BBC here). Is he right? No - I strongly believe he is not! 

One of his arguments is that children can't understand the art as well as adults. Really? There's a lot of artwork I'm not sure I understand BUT I can experience it, appreciate it and maybe even be inspired by it without understanding it and so to can children. 

As a teacher, I regularly share images of artists work with children. Back in March, I delivered a half day felt workshop inspired by Lowry to a Year 4 class. We began by looking at images of Lowry's work on the whiteboard and  identifying what we could see, what we liked, what we didn't like, how it made us feel and the children's responses were, at times,mind blowing. Their insights were fascinating and, after 10 years of teaching and delivering art lessons, I can tell you this is not a rare occurrence.  What would have made my session better would be if I'd been able to actually take the children to view Lowry's original work at The Lowry in Salford - imagine their insights if they could see it up close and personal and truly appreciate the work that had gone into it. For one, on the internet you really can't appreciate the size or texture created in a piece.

Taking children to view art work in the flesh is, I feel, an extremely important tool in art education in allowing children to experience & feel art and, most importantly, be inspired by it.