Tutorial: How to make felted lavender soap

 I'm making some felted soaps this week so I thought I would post a tutorial so you can make your own.

What you need:

Time:  Plan for about 15 minutes to make one felted soap.

Hot water: Kitchen sink is the ideal place to do this.

Soap: I only use Yardley English lavender. It has such a beautiful smell.  You should definitely find a soap with a scent you like because you will be spending some time with it...

Wool roving,  I use only about 0.1 ounce to do 1/2 bar of soap. It's more interesting if you have 2 or more colors.

shetland moorit (brown) from our ewe Iris, and white from our wether DeNozzo

1. Cut your bars of soap, if desired.

I cut the bars in half so they fit my hands easily; I also shave off the 1 or 2 of the sharpest corners.

 2. Set up a medium sized bowl of hot water in your kitchen sink. 

Don't make it too hot, because you will be putting your hand in it! The hot water will get soapy as you work, this is what you want.

3. Lay out a small amount (about 0.1 ounce) of background color roving. 

Dry your hands completely before you touch the roving so it doesn't stick to you.

Don't use too much wool, you want just enough to cover the soap without big gaps.

 4.   Pull out  small wisps of a contrasting color, lay them on top. 

 4. Flip the roving over so your decoration is now on the BOTTOM.

5. Lay another small wisp of background color over the background, crosswise. 

 The fibers should be at about a 90 degree angle to make good felt.

6. Place your soap on the pile of roving. 

notice fibers going crosswise, also white decoration fibers are on the bottom.

 7. Gather up the roving like a little package around your soap.

8. Wrap your hand around the package keeping the fibers in place, don't let them shift. 

9. Dunk your hand into the hot water, hold for a few seconds. 

Then pull it out of the bowl, and begin to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze gently, using both hands. Don't move the soap around yet, be careful not to shift the fibers.

 10. Squeeze about 10 times, and then begin to gently Rotate the soap in your hands; and keep squeezing. 

You are squeezing the fibers together into the soap. Do Not Rub or shift the fibers!!  The wool should become full of warm soapsuds. After squeezing about 25 times, dunk again in the hot soapy water. 

11. Squeeze and gently rotate without shifting the fibers,  about 50 more times, Dunk.

Another 50 times, Dunk. Another 50 times, Dunk. Keep going. If you have any sharp corners you can press them in with your fingers after the soap has softened up.  Keep going about 10-15 minutes.

12. Finally, Polish the surface. 

When the felt is pretty tight around the soap, then you can safely rub or polish the surface with your fingertips without shifting the fibers.

13. Fulling step with cold water. 

Run some cold water over your your soap, still squeezing and polishing...Dunk again in hot water, more squeezing and polishing.

14. Final rinse, and then set aside to dry. 

 

If you are making another one, replenish about half of the hot water to your bowl before you start.

Drying: Allow 2-3 days to dry out completely if you are wrapping it as a gift. 

If it's for yourself, then put it right in your shower, it's ready to be used right away. The wool will continue to shrink around the soap as you use it. It's a great exfoliant, and helps keep soap scum off your shower.

Enjoy!!  Let me know if this was helpful to you. I think felting is a fun activity for kids if they are patient enough to stay with it. I found that it helps to have them count out the squeezes:
 "... 48, 49, 50, DUNK!"

Do you have questions, or any other ideas for felting soap? I would love to hear comments from you. 

Shadow Puppet Tutorial #3: Cutting out the Jacob puppet

simple Jacob puppet, non-moving arm

This tutorial will show you how to make an expressive moving-arm shadow puppet and provide a free template for making the puppet.

For this tutorial, we will make Jacob, a Bible story character.

I edited The Story of Jacob from Genesis into a shadow puppet script, you can access the script here.

For performing the show, you will eventually want to make 2 Jacobs, one facing to the right and the other facing to the left.  You can see in the script which way he needs to face for each scene.

To cut out the puppet, you can access the printable template here.

Simple puppet:  If you want to make a simple puppet with no moving parts, cut out the puppet body on the solid lines, including his hand and wrist all as one piece. You won't need to cut out the other 2 arm pieces. I use scissors on the easy parts and finish the tricky parts with an exacto blade. See my previous post for pictures of the cutting process.

Moving-arm puppet: If you want to make a moving-arm puppet, you will need 2 small brads(preferably in a dark color) from a craft supply store. Cut out the puppet body with no wrists or hands (follow the dotted line), and cut out the 2 extra arm pieces separately. Put the 2 arm pieces together at the elbow joint. See dotted lines on template.
Elbow joint: Pierce through the upper and lower arm pieces and attach the brad. Don't pierce the body with this brad!!! Make sure the elbow bends freely.
Shoulder joint: Pierce the upper arm and body pieces with the brad; attach the upper arm to the body as shown.
The smooth heads of both brads should slide on the theatre screen (facing the audience).

Either way, your finished puppet will have just 1 hand. I don't recommend trying to give him 2 hands, it  makes the puppet too complicated.

Jacob template with optional moving arm

After you are finished cutting your puppet, check the script to see which way it needs to face. You will attach drinking straws to the puppeteer side of the puppet.  Before attaching the straws, it's a good idea to protect the cardstock. You can either laminate the whole puppet,  or just put a piece of shipping tape on the puppeteer side to protect the cardstock from repeated taping and untaping. (I don't permanently attach the straws; I tape them on just for the show and then remove them again when I put the puppets away. ) After protecting the card stock, tape on the straws for your show.  See my Puppet Theatre Tutorial for pictures of this.

 I hope you have fun with this! Please let me know if you have any questions.