About six months ago, when I was at Purl Soho (love!), I bought this little basket kit for making fuzz balls. I know what you’re thinking… fuzz balls? Why on earth would I want fuzz balls? As my skeptical older brother so astutely pointed out, I could probably find plenty of fuzz balls under the couch. *But* these aren’t regular old fuzz balls – these are cute homemade fuzz balls with the potential to become cute homemade little creatures!
Behold, the Futte Futte fuzz ball-making contraption!
Do you see the adorable little piggie and bird in the picture?! These are the kind of cute homemade creatures that I aspire to! And thus, I shelled out $15 for a plastic basket contraption to make fuzz balls.
Well, fast-forward six months to this weekend and I finally got my chance to make cute homemade fuzz balls. It wasn’t entirely easy, however, since the product is from Japan, the instructions are in Japanese, and the almighty Google couldn’t find me an English translation. I went off of the tiny black and white photos on the package insert to more or less figure out what to do.
Basically, you take some wool roving (fortunately, my SIL saved a stash of this for me from samples that she received when purchasing fancy-pants yarns online), stick it into the little pink basket, and swoosh it around a tub of soapy water. I didn’t find this video until after my first go-round, but it shows you the process:
I also learned after the fact that the water should apparently be very, very hot. (Thanks to Kookababy‘s blog for that little tidbit!)
So, after allowing my fuzz balls to dry, here’s the finished product:
Now….onto those cute homemade little creatures! I made the three pinky-orangey balls with the thought of making a butterfly. This was inspired by the caterpillar featured on the Futte Futte product packaging:
Cute, no? So, using jewelry wire, I wired the three balls together. I wanted to be able to arch the little guy’s back, hence the wire instead of hot glue or fabric glue. On one end of the wire I wound a whimsical little knot for a tail or sorts, on the other end I wrapped it into antennae, which I then wired little beads onto for feelers. I used embroidery thread to stitch on eyes and a mouth, then cut tiny wings out of felt and wired those onto the butterfly’s back (I may end up hot glue-ing the wings on later, I haven’t decided yet). And, ta-da! My first cute little homemade fuzz ball creature!
So adorable…you made that little bug? Would be very cute gifts this holiday season :). You are so crafty…love it!!