Tutorial Thursday - Sweet Little White Ghosts.

Hi, I'm Donni of Fairyfolk. My blog is The Magic Onions. Today I'm going to show you how we made sweet little ghosts for Halloween.

Both my children love to play with my wool roving. I think they enjoy the feel of it... it's smoothness, it's lightness in their fingers. Wool is so wonderfully tactile and I find it soothes them. So, today, when the tensions from being stuck inside from the rain started to fray our nerves, I decided it was a good time for us to make Little White Ghosts...

It's a wonderfully simple activity, needing only white wool roving, a needle felting needle for me and some google eyes for fun.

To make our ghosts, I gave each child a small tuft of wool about the size of a golf ball. They rolled the wool softly in their hands until a rough ball was formed. Then I used my needle felting needle to 'catch' the wool, securing it in place so that it kept it's round shape.

Then I gave each child a tuft of wool about 3 times as long as the ball. They stroked this tuft flat, gently smoothing all the fibers in one direction (you don't really need to do this as the fibers are generally in the right direction, but it is a wonderfully soothing and calming action and children like this step immensely.)

Then the children held the long tuft in one hand and placed their ball in the center. They gently closed their hand, folding the longer tuft of wool over the ball.

With my needle felting needle, I once again secured the shape by poking it gently just a few times, smoothing around the 'head' of the ghost and leaving the 'tufty' bottom of the ghost free.

The children gave their ghosts eyes (the google eyes we have are self-adhesive but you would use a little glue if yours aren't)

I used a needle and thread to hang the ghosts and we found just the right spot for them on our porch. (You might notice that K didn't want hers to be scary like the others, yea right!, so I needle felted a smile onto his face).

They are just wonderful little ghosts... they spin around happily in the breeze. We were all enchanted by them when we arrived home from a trip to the post office this afternoon. They were clearly excited to see us... twirling as if to say 'welcome, welcome... yay, you are home!'

Blessings and magic.