Make your own Grape Sheep

Courtesy of my little sweat shop Sam, you all now have a fun filled tutorial that will guide you through making your own little grape sheeps.

You can learn how I learned, by ordering one of these little kits: SHEEPS!

Or, if you have a bit of a fiber stash, you can just use whatcha got. Here's what you'll need.

Supplies:
Felting needle
Foam Safety Cube, a pile of dishcloths, or an old pillow
1-2 oz. of roving in a few colors, whatever you want the body to be (I used black), some white (for his little eyes, or you can just glue on some google eyes), and then the color for his "fur" (i used pink/purple/blue mohair locks)
Toothpick
Patience

As a small warning, the needle will poke through your bones, so be careful. It's sharp, and painful, and bad. Bad bad bad.....

Moving on.

Take some/most of your body colored roving, and divide it in half, as below (leave some bits out for your eyes later):

Pardon the black on black, i did what I could. Anyways, take one of these halves, set it aside.
Take your other half, and divide it in half again, these quarters (call them A and B) will become your head and your body.

To make the body, take either A or B, and roll it up into a ball around the toothpick, like so:

Remove the toothpick, place it on your foam/cloths/padding, take your felting needle, and go to town. Poke it to smithereens. This will take a while, but eventually the fibers will snag together and you will end up with a firm-ish little square/circle, etc, as below:

If you want to make a roundish bum/front half, drag some fibers across your corners and poke them in. Just play with it, you can really honestly do whatever makes you happy.









Taking portion B, repeat the felting process to make a head. Once you have 2 little lumpy firmish bits, attach the head to the body, like so:

Poke the head on using the felting needle until that little booger sticks. Honest, it will, eventually. Be patient! and try not to poke your little fingers!!!






Now set your terrier-looking bit aside, and grab your other half. Divde it in half length-wise (like drafting fiber, NOT LIKE ABOVE) then take your two halves, call them C and D and pull each of them apart into 3 pieces, using the first technique. You'll end up with 6 bits.

Using your toothpick to roll them up, make yourself 2 ears, attach them to the head. Then make yourself 4 legs, and attach them to the "body".


Now the eyes:
Take some white fibers, really just a few hairs, roll them into a ball, and then poke them onto the face where you want them until you get little white pancakes. Take a couple of fluffs of black, roll them into balls, and poke them into the white pancakes to make eyeballs! WHEE!

Fur: take your other color, and poke it LIGHTLY into the body so you get fluffy little sheep bits, and you get a Grape Sheep! TA DAA!!
Or christmas sheep, or blueberry sheep, or whatever strikes your fancy, see?

You know you want one. 

Email me with questions! I have faith!

PS- you really might want to get some band-aids, just in case, you know?