Broccoli truly is a magical vegetable. Not only is is packed full of Vitamin C, K and A, and a fantastic source of dietary fibre, but it is also a vegetable with a ton of personality. This makes sculpting it an interesting and exciting process.

Broccoli already possesses a very expressive human trait: hair. The hair of my broccoli was the most fun to sculpt. The stalk was much more difficult, but not disheartening. I like to start with the branches attached from the very beginning, because I find that if I felt them onto the stalk after it is done, they are not as strong. The hair is not overly felted, because I like to keep the poofy look to it. Also, it creates a broccoli-esque appearance if you felt concentrated lines into an otherwise loosely felted ball.

Attaching the broccoli hair to the stalk can be difficult, and I have had a couple of issues with it coming apart. This can easily be fixed, you just have to make sure that you spend some time really securing it with a few good jabs of your needle. If you are still having issues, I would recommend just putting a dab of hot glue there as it is underneath the crown and nobody is going to see it.

Ah, the chili pepper! My spicy friend.

I have really gone on a pepper kick this year, although I have yet to document it here. This was the first type of pepper that I tried. I thought it would be the easiest because of its distinctive shape and colour. It proved to be quite successful, and I have since gone on to make a jalapeno and several bell peppers. Hopefully, I will have them up soon.

I enjoy how this guy is giving us a bit of a wink. It is actually because I made one of his eyebrows too large, but I didn’t really notice until I looked at this picture. Happy mistakes like this give my veggies that much more personality, so I don’t mind.

I was inspired to put up the chili this evening because I chopped a couple up and put them in my yam soup for dinner. It was DELICIOUS, I highly recommend.  Enjoy

The radish is an under-rated vegetable. With its beautiful colour and distinctive tail, it makes for a great needle-felting model.

It was also quite simple to felt. I started with the pink colour which makes up the majority of his body. After sculpting this portion, I attached a bit of white to the bottom which I then blended by going over it with a fine needle again and again. The tail took a bit of experimentation, but eventually all I did was take a bit of white wool roving and roll it between the palms of my hands, until it became a very skinny tail-like piece. I attached the end of it to the bottom of the radish and it looks just about right.

For the stem, I used the same technique that I did for the carrot, except that I felted the green pieces a little more before I attached them. I also cut them off instead of leaving them long, like I did for the carrot.
Here he is, my radish:

So in honour of my birthday a couple of days ago, my wonderful sister and boyfriend created this Moobs themed cake for me. I have to say, it looks spectacular and tastes even better.  It is carrot cake (naturally!) with cream cheese icing. Yummmm!

My brother, who is currently visiting from England, also gave me a Moobs inspired gift. It is a book titled “Vegetables, Herbs, and Fruit: An Illustrated Encyclopedia” and will be a great help as I search for more and more obscure fruits and veggies to needle felt. I may soon be posting images of felted endive or durians with eyes. Stay tuned!

I found myself very busy over this holiday season, creating and packaging gifts for people. Every year I put off making gifts for my family and friends until the last possible moment, and then panic the night before. This year was particularly hectic because my workplace offered to buy quite a huge chunk of my stock to use as gifts for the other employees. This was a great opportunity for me, so I snatched it up. Little did I realize that I didn’t have quite as many little Santas and Snowmen as I thought, and I had to needle felt like mad to get them all done. I did finish, and packaged them all up with little bows. Take a look.

Here is another rosey-cheeked winter friend. Santa!

Santa stemmed from the snowman idea. They are both very basic, not-entirely-3D designs that make quite cute Christmas tree ornaments. They can also be made into broaches, and I may even try magnets!

Santa starts with the head shape. I chose a peachy-pink skin tone, because it was actually all that I had. It is quite good because he ends up looking a nice healthy robust colour, which is how I would imagine Santa to be. I needle felted the red part of the hat onto his head, then added the white fur trim and pom-pom. After this, I did his eyes, nose and rosey cheeks. The nose is just a small piece of wool that I attached on and then shaped using a single needle. Most of this work needs to be done with a single needle because it is quite small and detailed. The cheeks were done in the same way as the snowman; I just took a few fibres of pink wool, and attached them with a couple of pokes.

Santa’s beard went on last. I started by attaching some white wool and then needle felting it quite a bit, so that it was quite firm and sturdy. Then, I attached some looser pieces that I didn’t felt quite as much. This gives his beard a fluffy, Santa-esque look.

Ah, the carrot. This little guy is a descendant of my first attempt at needle felting vegetables. I created a carrot for my friend’s birthday, and everyone fell in love with it. The rest is history.

I think that it is the colour and distinctive shape which make the carrot so popular. Also, a lot of character is expressed through his hairdo. I like to make it extremely long and fuzzy.

The construction is fairly straight forward, just form the shape, and then attach on the hair. I also make the rings around the carrot by just needle felting in a line around the circumference. I do this a few times at various spots along his length, and the result is quite convincing.

My orange was a pleasant surprise. I was not sure that he would be very exciting in the end, because he does not have a lot going on. The simplicity seemed to come through for him, because I think that he looks pretty darn cute.

He was extremely easy to construct. I decided to make him a flattened orange, so that it would be easier to make him into a broach. I just needle felted a round sculpture out of orange, and then gave him a little green spot where his stem would have come out. I think that putting it off centre gives him a little personality.

The surface texture was easy as well. The tiny holes that sometimes occur when you are using a needle that may be a bit too coarse for the job actually ended up looking like the little pores on an orange peel. I had an inkling that this would be the case, and it turned out that I was correct. Happy

Not the animal the funny, fuzzy little fruit!

The kiwi was particularly challenging to sculpt. The white lines which radiate from the centre and the tiny seeds were the slowest and most painstaking part of the project. I started by sculpting the green part. I spent quite a bit of time on this as I wanted the surface to be hard enough for me to sculpt the details on to it. I needle felted the white lines and seeds directly onto the green, without trying to sculpt them before attachment. With parts as tiny as these, it is best to just attach them to the main project and shape them into it. It is too difficult, not to mention dangerous for your fingers, to try and felt itty bitty pieces of wool.

I made the eyes on my kiwi quite large. This is because of the seeds. I found that smaller eyes got lost amongst all of the other tiny, dark dots on his face.  The result is quite cute, and slightly amphibious…

I just made my boyfriend his favorite little alien for his birthday.  The Reddit alien is reddit.com’s mascot and fits in quite well with my interests because he’s cute too! My boyfriend reads reddit everyday and I knew it was his favorite website so it was a no-brainer to make this for him.  He’s really quite excited about it!

Upvote if you like him!!!