Simple ideas for felting beads from felt with your own hands. Felting wool beads Dry felting beads

Strawberry necklace made using the wet method

Felting wool is an ancient type of needlework, which today is again experiencing a real boom among craftswomen. Felting, felting or felting, has many different techniques, having mastered which you can create fashionable clothes, shoes, toys, even stylish interior items.

One of the modern trends in felting is the production of original jewelry. Wool can be used to make necklaces, brooches, beads and bracelets. We invite you to take a closer look at this unusual art and make beautiful beads from felt with your own hands.

Making beads from wool

Every fashionista has at least once felt dissatisfied with her collection of accessories. The desire to surprise, delight, and please others with their filigree work is typical of girls. Accessories are an integral part of the look.

Yes, jewelry, the shine of jewelry - this is a classic look. But what if you want to add new notes, come up with something original, incredibly beautiful? An unusual necklace made of soft large beads, an original brooch or an unusual bracelet is a new direction in creating stylish jewelry. Such accessories are worn with pleasure by stars of the world of cinema and music, proudly walking along the red carpet. Do you want to add to your collection of jewelry made from soft large beads? We offer several simple felting lessons for beginners.

How to make beads from wool

Economical way of felting

Wet felting is one of the most convenient and economical methods for making beads. It is not easy for beginners to calculate the amount of material, felt felt balls of the same density and size, and guess the possible shrinkage of the product.

We offer a visual master class for beginners:

• Let's prepare the materials. We will need a skein of inexpensive yarn, wool for felting beads, a star needle, a bottle of liquid soap, and a gypsy needle.

Materials and tools

• We make preparations. We will wind several koloboks from light yarn. Their size should be slightly smaller than the planned beads.
• We wrap the ball in wool. We make sure that the layer is applied evenly and that bald spots do not form on the surface.
• First we use the dry felting method. You need to go through the wool shallowly with a needle, going over the entire ball. We hold the needle strictly vertically so that it does not break.

• Now we will felt the beads using the wet felting technique. We wet the workpiece with warm water, drop a little liquid soap on top, then gently roll the bun between our palms, periodically wetting the workpiece with water.
• If creases appear on a smooth woolen surface, smooth them out with your fingers, gently squeezing the bead in your hands.
• We continue felting until the wool ball becomes dense enough. When the balls are ready, place them on a fluffy dry towel and roll them a little to remove excess moisture.
• The last stage is drying. Many craftswomen dry their products using a radiator or naturally. If the color of the beads is bright, you should be careful not to dry them in the hot sun, as the color may fade.

When the beads have dried thoroughly and taken their final shape, you can begin making beads. We center the beads correctly, pierce each one with a gypsy needle, and string it on a thread, elastic band or fishing line. Beautiful, bright, original beads are ready. They will be a wonderful gift for a friend, mother or grandmother for the holiday of March 8th.

Economy option for felting beads

Having mastered sheeting, you can make a whole collection of stylish jewelry of all colors and shades. But what if you want to combine all the beauty of rainbow shades in one product? We offer a simple master class on making rainbow beads. To create a decoration you will need any unspun wool, vegetable, silk fibers, a simple dishwashing sponge, a serrated needle for felting, as well as a piece of “anti-stress” bubble wrap.

Work algorithm:

• We work with wool dry. Wool is usually sold in the form of a combed strip or a carded bundle. Pull two strands from the bundle for each bead. Roll the strand into a loose ball. We make several such preparations.
• We place each lump on a sponge, bait each bead a little, making neat punctures evenly, turning the ball slowly.
• We decorate the beads. To add rainbow colors to the decoration, we decorate the beads with colored fibers, lightly pinning them to the ball. It can be thin wool in bright colors, viscose, bamboo or banana fibers.

To decorate beads that are wet felted, you should not use acrylic fibers. They are designed for the dry felting method.

• Let's prepare the solution. Rub a small piece of soap into warm water or add a little dishwashing liquid.
• Spread bubble wrap on a flat work surface and place the blank balls on it. We generously pour each one with soapy water and roll it in our hands until the beads become smooth and dense.

After the felt beads are washed and dried, you can assemble the decoration. By the way, many craftswomen begin decorating beads at the final stage of work, using colored fibers, beads, sequins and other decor. We pierce each bead in the middle with a needle or knitting needle, and then string it on a thread. Stylish rainbow beads are beautiful and versatile. They can be worn to work, a walk or a friendly party.

Tutorial on felting rainbow beads

Decoration as a gift

Jewelry made using the felting technique will be an original and desirable gift for any fashionista, regardless of age or status. Stylish handmade accessories made of wool have long captivated spontaneous and young girl students, confident and successful business women, as well as fashionable ladies of venerable age. Filigree jewelry is beautiful, versatile, cozy and distinctive. We offer you to make an amazing gift with your own hands - bright, elegant beads made of felt.

Let's start felting wool beads:

• We tear off several strands from the combed ribbon, forming small round lumps. Don't despair if it's loose and falls apart easily, everything goes according to plan!
• Soak each piece in a soapy solution and roll a ball between your palms. You need to felt until the bead reaches the desired density.
• When the beads have dried, we begin making the jewelry. We lay out a “model” of the future necklace on a piece of paper. We alternate felted wool and plastic beads and string them using a gypsy needle.

In addition to felting wool balls, you can make a brooch in the shape of a large peony flower. This will add festive elegance to the decoration. Such an accessory will be a worthy gift, decorating any, even royal, outfit.

Wool necklace

Having learned how to felt jewelry from wool, new horizons in the world of needlework open up before you. Having mastered felting wet or dry, you can surprise others, give gifts to loved ones and decorate your fashionable look with beautiful hand made accessories.

DIY scarf beads

In this master class I will show you how I felt beads. I would like to first say that this is not the only way, some craftswomen felt beads from start to finish with a needle (dry felting), and some only with soap and water (wet felting). I combine dry and wet felting, because I consider the first option to be very long, and for the second, the beads need to be folded very carefully so that they do not fall apart during felting with water, and creases do not form.

So, in order to felt felt beads you will need:

• wool for felting (it can be absolutely any kind, but if you want to felt from coarse wool, keep in mind that the beads will bite!);
• silk fibers, yarn, etc. (for decoration);
• sponge (or felting brush, also known as felting mat);
• felting needle (medium thickness, for example No. 60);
• a bowl of hot water;
• liquid soap;
• towel

When felting, wool shrinks by about 20%-30%, this depends on the properties of the particular wool, as well as how much you want to “roll” your bead.
Therefore, for a bead of a certain size, you first need to fold a ball larger than the bead you want to make.
Take a strand of wool in your hands and slightly split the fibers together. You can roll a strand of wool without this procedure, but personally, I find it more convenient to do it this way; when folding the beads, the surface becomes more uniform (without flagella).

Once you have mixed the wool fibers sufficiently homogeneously, roll the wool into a ball, roll it as tightly as possible, because. It is more difficult to roll a large air bead into a small one without creating creases. Try to fold the bead so that it is an even ball without strong “fractures” or “bends”.

Once you have folded the ball, take a felting sponge and needle. Place the ball so that the tail of the wool is at the top and, by pricking the needle (through the ball into the sponge), secure the wool so that the ball does not unfold. The needle will push the hairs inside the ball, where they will become entangled with other hairs.
At this stage, you do not need to achieve a perfectly smooth surface of the ball, but if there are large bends, you need to level them, or fill them with a needle, or add wool to the place where a strong bend has formed. Usually 3-5 needle pricks are enough to secure the fur.

If you want to make plain beads, then at this stage of work you can already move on to wet felting, and if you want to decorate it, you can do it this way.
Silk fibers give a very beautiful effect. To decorate beads with silk, take a strand of silk and secure it to the ball with a needle.
If you want the pattern to be in the form of a clear twisting line, take a thin strand. If you want a pattern in the form of a cobweb, split a little fiber in your hands (like wool in the 2nd picture), wrap the bead and secure with a needle. Here you also don’t need to be very diligent in rolling the silk onto the ball; a few little pricks in different places are enough, just to give the silk direction and so that it doesn’t slide off the bead.

And this is how you can make a bead with beautiful smooth color transitions. To do this, you need to take wool of different colors, mix it together to get halftones and as few wool flagella as possible. Then fold the wool into a ball and secure with a needle.

Beads can also be decorated with wool yarn, I recommend using 100% wool yarn or yarn with synthetic additives up to 30%; if there is more synthetic, the threads may not lie down at all in some places, or you will have to almost cover them with wool so that they do not puff up.
Attach a thread to the wool ball and felt the tip, retreating 1-2 cm from the very end. After this, wrap the bead with thread in a random order and secure the tip with a needle. To be sure, poke the needle in several more places, paying special attention to the places where the yarn intersects. Secure the yarn so that it does not slip off the bead. In some places, you can make small patches of wool to better hold the yarn or as decoration.

When you have already decorated the beads, you can start wet felting.
Take a bowl of hot water, liquid soap and a towel. The hotter the water, the faster the matting process will go, but there is no need to pour boiling water, spare your hands. Liquid soap can be anything, as long as your hands react well to it. A towel is needed to wipe off excess soap and water; it is better that your hands are free of foam, then the friction will be stronger.
Take a bead and wet the top layer of wool (lightly roll the bead on the water), you don’t need to wet the bead right through, it’s better to do it gradually. If you wet it right through, it can fall into itself and you will end up with creases, this is especially true for soft balloons, if the bead is dense enough, you can take the risk

After you have wet the bead, drop a little soap on it and begin to roll it between your palms, first gently, and then increasing the pressure.
By the way, silk becomes almost transparent when felted, and when it dries it regains its color.
Roll until 1-2 hairs come off when you pinch the beads. As soon as this happens, you know that the top layer of felt has fallen off. Now you can wet the bead thoroughly and felt it harder. If you have a soft bead, slowly increase the pressure; if it is dense, you don’t have to be gentle.

Gradually the bead will become dense and shrink, you can leave it once it has become a little denser, or you can reduce it and compact it to the state of a pebble, your choice. Let me just say that high-quality beads are dense, elastic beads that do not lose their shape when pressed on them.

After the beads have been felted, rinse them thoroughly under running water, squeeze them out, roll them a little in your hands to give them shape and dry them. And then string it on a ribbon and wear it with pleasure!

I present to you a master class on felting wool beads. I think that this activity will appeal to beginner felters who are just getting acquainted with felting wool. Therefore, doing it by hand is the best way to understand what wool is and the process of creating felted wool beads.

For felting beads we will need:

1. Unspun wool. For felting and personal development, absolutely any unspun wool is suitable. If you make different beads from different types of wool, you will experience for yourself what wool is, the shrinkage of wool, and see the result of your work.
2. Plant or silk fibers.
3. A regular dish sponge or a piece of foam rubber or a felting brush.
4. Barbed needle for felting.
5. Water.
6. A bar of soap or liquid soap.
7. Bubble polyethylene film.
8. A sharp metal object like a gypsy needle or knitting needle.

Let's go directly to the master class on felting beads

We take the prepared wool and pull out small strands from it. Wool is usually sold as a combed strip, in which the long fibers are arranged in strands, or a carded bundle, similar to cotton wool. I usually use thin strands, two for each bead.

Take one strand by the edge and twist it to the other edge, rolling the strand into a bun, like a snowball. Then we take another strand and wind it over the resulting bun. The process of forming a bun can be simplified; to do this, initially choose the thickest and largest strand at your discretion, depending on what kind of bead you want to get.

You should end up with a soft, loose wool ball. Next, we perform similar operations for the following beads.
Now we need a sponge and a needle or knitting needle. We take the bun and lightly bait the future bead. We make punctures with a needle slowly, constantly turning the bun, evenly on all sides. Continue this way until the shape of the bead is fixed.

Next step- decoration of the ball. You can decorate the ball according to your desire and imagination - with wool fibers of different colors, silk or fibers of banana, soy, viscose, bamboo and so on. It is not recommended to use acrylic fibers because it is intended for dry felting. You can take threads of roving or other natural yarn. Or you can not decorate the bun at all at this stage.

My bead decoration is made with black viscose, yellow and blue silk fibers. Viscose and silk fibers are slightly pinned to the bead.

We carried out operations with a needle to give a spherical shape to our bead and fix the constituent elements for further actions with it. If you don’t have a needle or knitting needle at hand, you don’t have to perform piercing manipulations; you just need to treat them with care after winding the koloboks.

Next step- make a soap solution. To do this, rub the soap into water or wash a bar of soap in water; you can dissolve liquid soap or shampoo in water. As a last resort, you can use dishwashing liquid and dilute it in water; the main thing is to watch the condition of your hands when performing work. It is advisable to use hot or warm water for the soap solution. If you don't have warm or hot water, you can make a solution from cold water.

Place wool balls on bubble wrap and pour soapy water over them. Then, very smoothly, slowly, so as not to spoil the shape, we begin to roll the balls over the surface. If possible, the balls can be rolled all at once or one at a time.
Slowly, gradually compacting the ball, we increase the pressure, but without using much force, since it is not yet ready for this. In addition, it is convenient to roll the ball carefully between your palms, making sure that you do not end up with an oval-shaped ball.

Watch this useful video: Master class on felting wool beads

At this stage, the under-flattened balls are not so important; you just need to increase the pressure on the more convex places of the lumps. In general, we continue to roll the balls and bring them to the form of beads.
If you need identical beads, then at the very first stage when preparing the strands you need to take strands of the same size and thickness.

After the beads have acquired a charming, even and dense surface shape, from which the fibers do not separate when plucked, we dip them in clean water and wash them from soap. Then we shower them with hot and cold water to seal them better.

In the end, the beads turn out to be fluffy with sticking hairs. If you wish, you can make the beads smooth - cut the hairs with scissors or carefully shave with a blade without removing the layer from the bun.

In order to make beads from the balls, you need to make holes in them. Make holes in wet balls, as wet wool balls are easier to pierce. You can do this with any tool, as long as it is made of stainless steel. You can leave the beads on the knitting needle to dry.

I made holes in the balls using a rug needle, then stuck them on toothpicks to dry.

The penultimate step is drying the beads. We place the beads on a paper sheet or piece of fabric under the sun's rays or on a heating radiator. If you place the balls without a backing, they will take longer to dry.

If you made beads without decorations or designs, you can decorate them at this stage. Prick a pattern with a needle or embroider it with beads, sequins or other decorations.
And one last thing. At your request, you can complement the beads with the same beads or hang them on your phone or keys. You can also see the section

In this step-by-step master class you will see how to make beautiful beads from wool with your own hands using the wet felting technique.

This handicraft is simple and fun; once you learn how to fiddle with simple things, you can create beautiful designer items and souvenirs. Felted wool beads ideally complement knitted clothing - they are soft and cozy, lightweight and do not leave any puffs. This decoration can be worn with an open collar or with turtlenecks. If you like voluminous jewelry, increase the diameter of the beads.

Preparing materials for felting

To felt beads from wool, buy materials and tools at a craft store:

• wool of two colors (in the master class, black and white are used as a basis, but you can choose your favorites);
• floss threads to match the wool;
• black satin narrow ribbon;
• black braid;
• gypsy needle;
• beads (white mother-of-pearl, black);
• glass beads (white, black).

How to make beads from wool

To make your own beads, start by felting beads from wool. To do this, pour warm water into a bowl and press the liquid soap dispenser several times to obtain a soap solution.

Lay out a towel and start preparing the wool. Divide the wool into nine parts, because there will be nine balls. Make four white pieces, two black pieces, and three mixed colors.

To felt a bead, roll a strand of wool into a ball and submerge it completely in soapy water. Next, start rolling it on your hand, gently making circular movements, without pressing. As soon as you feel that the ball is taking shape and rising, you can roll it more intensively until the desired density is obtained.

Then rinse the workpiece under clean cold water, squeeze it lightly in your hand and place it on the radiator to dry. Make all the bead pieces in a similar manner. Mixed color blanks are also easy to make. Felt a white ball and add a black transparent strand on top. Roll out in your hands and dry.

Bead decoration and assembly

After all the parts for the beads are completely dry, start decorating with embroidery, beads and braid. In total you need to decorate four beads.

Bead No. 1

Take the white ball. Apply a pattern on both sides of it as in the photo - a cross.

Place a large bead or seed bead in the center; you can insert a song underneath for beauty.

Secure with thread and place black and white strips of beads on four sides of the cross.

Then use black floss thread to embroider the outline of the cross using a chain stitch.

After leaving a little space, use regular embroidery stitches to border the cross. Sew white beads in the empty spaces between the legs of the cross.

Bead No. 2

Embroider flowers with white thread on a dark wool bead made by yourself. Tie a French knot in the center of the flower. To do this, wind the thread four times around the needle itself and stick it next to where the thread exits the ball.

Gently pull the thread through, the structure will be secured and a French knot will be formed.

Place the petals around the knot. Form a curl from the thread and pick it up with another stitch from above.

In this way, embroider six petals. In this master class on felting beads, three flowers were created.

Bead No. 3

You will need a white bead. Using a simple pencil, draw exactly two horizontal lines on the ball. Use black thread to embroider these lines.

Fill in the inside between the lines with crosses.

In the center of the crosses, embroider another small cross with white thread. Sew beads (white mother of pearl) between the crosses. Tie French knots at the top and bottom of the embroidery.

Bead No. 4

Decorate this white ball with decorative braid. Sew it on top.

On top, create arcs of black thread, and fasten them in the center so that they do not fall apart.

Decorate the braid with white beads.

Assembling the decoration

Gather the felted beads onto a thin satin ribbon. Measure the required length of the ribbon, try it on so that the decoration can easily pass through your head, since there will be no clasp.

Thread a satin ribbon into a gypsy needle and string wool beads, alternating them by color. Insert glass elements between them and be sure to make knots on the tape for fixation.

Once you have finished stringing, tie or glue the ends of the ribbon. Original felted wool beads are ready to decorate a fashionable outfit!

We also have stylish, and many other decorations in. Wear it with pleasure and feel free to tell everyone that you are the author of designer jewelry.

A master class on felting wool beads for needlewomen on the “Women’s Hobbies” website was prepared by Natalya Napolova, photo by the author. Join us on social networks to stay updated on new lessons.