Felt Jewellery and small scale sculpture

Felt Adorned –  A felt jewellery workshop with Martien van Zuilen

I spent a very pleasant and creative weekend discovering the possibilities of creating felt jewellery and mini sculptural shapes. Martien van Zuilen’s ‘Sculpture and Jewellery on a Precious Scale’ workshop is full of  ideas and techniques to make jewellery or components to add to other felting projects. While her many samples are inspirational, her innovative techniques will also be very useful in future projects.

While I have some way to go as can be seen above, I did master the ‘cashew’ bead. I think all of us on the workshop would aspire to create pieces of the same calibre as Martien’s jewellery below:

Alternative ways of making balls and cords were demonstrated as well as beads with unique shapes and names to match! Scrunch, spike, dotty, fangs, colour-cuts and twirls to name but a few.  Because one can also incorporate wire and tubing with the beads or sculptural elements, the sky is the limit. Almost any kind of pendant, necklace, brooch or bangle is possible using these using wet-felting techniques. In conjunction with other fibres, the merino used was super fine, and therefore is very soft against the skin.