Meet Mr. Jethro O' Lantern / Needle Felted Rock

One of my Mentor's /teachers in learning to needle felt, said why don't you try a Rock O" Lantern or  light up an insulator.    That was Kay Petal  of www.feltalive.com.    So I thought about her idea, what a cool thing to do.  All I had at the time was a small string of twinkling Xmas lights, that ran on 2 AA batteries.  So here I go, the 1st step was to find my rock and then string and tape the lights to the rock. 

Step 1  taping the lights on the rock

OK now it looks like a robot monster, but I was happy with it.  So I moved on to putting core wool on to help secure the lights more.  I will tell you all a little secret I was afraid of needling a light and having break the cord. 

Step 2 adding the core wool

Now my rock looks like a furry little robot monster.  I like having the lights going while I am working on Jethro,it helps with placement.





Jethro with his first layer of orange on

The all I did was work the wool and worked the wool with the needles.  Believe me, I tore out wool and re did the eyes about 10 times before I was happy with them.  The mouth took me about 2 days, to get it the way I like it.  Now my family laughed at his nose they thought Jethro should have had a triangle nose.  Not me, if you have read my previous blogs, you would have read, I need to do the nose first and every character I do has to be able to breathe.  

Mr. Jethro O' Lantern

He turned out pretty good, and he does have a personality of his own. 

OK now he is truly one of a kind.  I dyed the wool for his orange parts with food dyes and kool aide.  The yellow I dyed with Kool aide and his stem was dyed with believe it or not, the Neon food dyes and green.    He was needle felted from a very fine Merino, almost silk feeling.  So alittle harder for me to punch.

Pictures taken at night

I went out tonight, and I am pretty proud of myself, my camera and Jethro behaved.  I got the lights twinkling.  This is so cool.  Can you believe it?  I got one pic on the left and then the right.  I have another secret to tell you all, I took 20 pictures before I ended up with these 2.  I just snapped and snapped.  I am now going to work on a witch.  I dyed the the wool today.  I am going to use red lights for her eyes, should be ghoulish.  :)))

This lightening up my Prairie Rocks has really opened me up to new ideas.  Please let me know what you think, I would love some feedback on my blog, so I know people have been reading it.  Thank you.  Take Care, and I will talk to all real soon, until next time :)))))))))))............................