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| "Soap in a Sweater" - felted soap |
Felting over soap is SO easy. I've read and watched
several tutorials. I'm going to tell you how I do it. You can use any
soap. I've even done it using hotel soaps. But usually I use my homemade
soap (which I posted a recipe for at my kitchen blog), primarily
because that's the main soap around my house, since I've been making and
using my homemade soap for probably twenty years now. Since the last
soap I made was heart-shaped, that's what this tutorial will show.
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| wrap wool tightly around the soap |
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| add some color variety if you want |
Wrap wool tightly around the soap, covering it totally.
If you leave it too loose, it'll take longer to tighten/shrink around
the soap, and you can end up with some wool flaps that are impossible to
adhere to the already felted soap. Once wool is felted it won't accept
anymore wool layering, unless you needle felt it (I tried this, but
wouldn't want to do it too much to make the soap start crumbling - I am
going to try needlefelting a little design first in some wool before
starting the wrapping process sometime). Looseness can be worked more -
I've done it, even after it's totally dry and I want it tighter around
the soap.
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| put the wool wrapped soap in a plastic bag |
Now put the wool wrapped soap into a sandwich bag. Here
is where I differ from other tutorials - they put the soap carefully
into the toe of a nylon sock, usually knotting it. Wet felting with
kids, as well as teaching felting in a setting where water accessibility
and dripping water isn't easy, taught me to use plastic bags. And who
wants to unknot something. I just put some hot water in the baggy, twist
it tightly around the soap, and start rubbing all around the soap. Most
wet felting has you using hot soapy water, but here you've already got
the soap. It'll get quite sudsy, which would rinse out easily with a
nylon sock, but I just pull the soap out and rinse it and the plastic
bag, then put the soap back in if it needs more felting. When I had the
Valentine Tea crafting party, we just left the bags by the greenhouse
sink and people coming to that craft station reused the bags.
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| after adding some hot water twist the bag tight and rub all around the soap |
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| rinse the felted soap and let it dry |
Total time for the process? Only about 5-10 minutes! And you've got a unique, creative, functional work of art.
