Crafting With Cat Hair : Cute Handicrafts to With Your Cat by Kaori Tsutaya and translated by Amy Hirschman is written by the author of a popular site, and is Japanese craft style in a very feline way. Using the soft hair you brush from your cat as well as store bought wool felt, you create projects for your home and as accessories for yourself.
Just so you know, I'm a cat lover since I was a kid. My very first pet in fact was a parakeet. I named my 'keet Pretty Kitty just to make sure my mom knew that a parakeet wasn't a cat and I still wanted a cat. People owned by cats can be a bit dotty about them. This review is for those people. The cat people who understand why we needed a book on crafting with cat hair.
The author loves cats, and gives lots of tips on proper brushing, using just the hair that sheds naturally and taking good care of your cat.
The projects are felted using the soft, fluffy undercoat that cats have in the winter and that brushes off in what seems like incredible amounts in the spring. The top hair, the hair you see and feel when you pet a cat and that seems to wind up everywhere tends to tangle and doesn't felt as well.
It starts with a cute wet felted finger puppet which is the image on the cover. Her instructions are clear on how to make the template and how to felt the puppet and she gives advice on making little collars. After that project, the rest are needle felted on a backing fabric. Wool felt is recommended. These is a great technique for lightly felted thrift store sweaters.
She gives instructions on how to sew, glue and make the projects in the book. There are adorable badges, trinket boxes, little zipper pouches that can be handsewn, pin cushions, purses and ideas for needle felting on clothing and accessories.A lot of the projects have their own little stencils you can trace from the pages. They are incredibly charming and sweet silhouette poses.
She also explains how to wash and care for your cat felted items since cat fur doesn't bond as strongly as wool does when felted.
With all the information, the projects and the love for cats that the author clearly has, this is a just a wonderful and inspiring book. Some of the projects as written repurpose things for crafty use. A lot of the rest can be done using thrifted sweaters lightly felted.
The full color photos of cats and the projects are well done. The instructions are clear, the technique is simple and the book is just charming.
You can get this book directly from Quick Books
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Showing posts with label needle felting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label needle felting. Show all posts
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Friday, December 3, 2010
Book Review- I Felt Awesome
I Felt Awesome by Moxie is a needle felting book that absolutely lives up to it's title.
In the middle of the holiday rush to get projects done in time, this book is very distracting. The projects are whimsical and delightfully unexpected. There is a lot of gorgeous sculpting in the needle felting community. This book has amazing projects that will make you laugh out loud and really inspire you to felt.
It starts with a tools list that explains the various tools. Including the fact that if you're needle felting, you need adhesive bandages. And safety tips so hopefully you won't need them as often. Materials list, and 25 pages on the techniques of needle felting so even absolute beginners can start with this book.
First chapter is wearables. May the laughter begin. Starting with a martini inspired necklace of olives with pimentos*, it just gets even more fun from there. Imagine a soft sculptured spiked wrist band. The juxtaposition of soft and spikey just thrills me.The perfect accessory for the crafty punk. I could really do this all day, describing all my favorite projects, but that will be a really really long review.So I'm going to try and narrow it down a lot.
The Fat Head barrettes are a great starter project or a project for an evening of crafting with friends. It starts with commercial felt with added embellishments.
The Playables are incredibly clever. The author uses magnets to create a soft sculpted Potato Head doll and if that's not cute enough, a Katamari Damacy ball that can pick up paper clips and such from your desk. Desk bowling and the cutest little emo doll I've ever seen are my other favorites from this chapter.
In Form Not Function, it gets to more of what I've come to expect from needle felting. Sculpture just for it's own sake. A faux neon sign, a cute houseplant with a hot dog hanging from it, an adorable mobile based on warning labels.
If you have had an interest in needle felting, I recommend this book happily. It has inspired me to pull my fiber back out, and it's inspired my daughter to try needle felting. She's only wet felted in the past.
You can get the book by clicking the Amazon.com link above, or directly from the publisher at MyCraftivityStore.com
Amazon.com affiliate links help support this site and my book habit.
*about those kinds of olives- when I was a kid, my brother and I called them the "Olives with the red poop" so every time I see them now, that's what goes through my mind.
In the middle of the holiday rush to get projects done in time, this book is very distracting. The projects are whimsical and delightfully unexpected. There is a lot of gorgeous sculpting in the needle felting community. This book has amazing projects that will make you laugh out loud and really inspire you to felt.
It starts with a tools list that explains the various tools. Including the fact that if you're needle felting, you need adhesive bandages. And safety tips so hopefully you won't need them as often. Materials list, and 25 pages on the techniques of needle felting so even absolute beginners can start with this book.
First chapter is wearables. May the laughter begin. Starting with a martini inspired necklace of olives with pimentos*, it just gets even more fun from there. Imagine a soft sculptured spiked wrist band. The juxtaposition of soft and spikey just thrills me.The perfect accessory for the crafty punk. I could really do this all day, describing all my favorite projects, but that will be a really really long review.So I'm going to try and narrow it down a lot.
The Fat Head barrettes are a great starter project or a project for an evening of crafting with friends. It starts with commercial felt with added embellishments.
The Playables are incredibly clever. The author uses magnets to create a soft sculpted Potato Head doll and if that's not cute enough, a Katamari Damacy ball that can pick up paper clips and such from your desk. Desk bowling and the cutest little emo doll I've ever seen are my other favorites from this chapter.
In Form Not Function, it gets to more of what I've come to expect from needle felting. Sculpture just for it's own sake. A faux neon sign, a cute houseplant with a hot dog hanging from it, an adorable mobile based on warning labels.
If you have had an interest in needle felting, I recommend this book happily. It has inspired me to pull my fiber back out, and it's inspired my daughter to try needle felting. She's only wet felted in the past.
You can get the book by clicking the Amazon.com link above, or directly from the publisher at MyCraftivityStore.com
Amazon.com affiliate links help support this site and my book habit.
*about those kinds of olives- when I was a kid, my brother and I called them the "Olives with the red poop" so every time I see them now, that's what goes through my mind.
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