Tutorial how to color dye felting wool with KoolAid

A great way to color or dye felting wool is with KoolAid. It comes in a wide variety of colors that could be mixed up to create even more colors. It doesn’t wash away and is as natural as a food coloring could be. Another great thing about KoolAid is that it can be found in any grocery store in US.

I suggest we start with a few bright colors like red for cherry flavored KoolAid, yellow for Lemon and orange for Orange and a few felted beads of medium size. To read more about the process of creating felted wool acorns please refer to my post on How to make felted wool acorns.

I first made colored water. To make it I added powder from KoolAid packs to the water in a few small plastic containers. As a result I’ve got five containers with brightly colored water. I added approximately a tea spoon of powder to each of the containers. Then I put each of my five beads into a separate container and let the beads suck in the colored water.

One can vary the quantity of powder dispensed in the water to make the solution more or less saturated. As a result beads can turn out of either pale and pastel hues or bright and vivid colors. It makes sense to heat containers with solution and beads in a microwave up to the boiling point for color to fully penetrate the beads. However be careful as beads will be super hot! I usually cool them off in cold water afterwards.

The result is pretty impressive. All of my five beads turned out to be colored differently. The most intensive, bright and beautiful color turned out to be orange. Yellow bead was not that intensely colored but I really like the light lemon color of the bead. They smell of oranges, lemons and cherries! Yummy!

All those brightly colored beads could be turned into acorns or into an acorn wind chime.

This post describes my personal experience with a particular product.
Please be careful trying to replicate the experiment!!!

Tutorial by TonyaUtkina

Spring Muses Russian Artists Team Contest

Spring is all about blooming trees and amazing flowers, first warm sunny days and positive attitudes. One of Russian Artists team members Lena Baymut came up with an idea of yet another team spring contest. The main idea of this spring content is to feature not only amazing items hand crafted by Russian Artists team members but to actually present the artists themselves. Every team member could submit a listing from his or her store featuring his or her muse.

We all love hand crafting and are always eager to share our new ideas and designs with the Intrenet community. Creating hand made items for spring is especially rewarding as spring is all about beautiful colors, flowers, rebirth and happiness!

All the submissions were available on Russian Artists Facebook Page for voting. It was again a tough choice to vote for one or another of our beautiful artists.

Russian Artists team is somewhat unique. We are all united by a common mother tongue that is Russia but we all live in different parts of the world. This contest was actually a great opportunity for us to meet each other in person. We now know the artists who create unique and inspiring art pieces in our team.

Every item submitted collected a great number of votes. Below are four who got the most votes.

1. Hand painted silk scarf Fishes by WoolGemArt


2. White mohair shawl by CozySeason


3. Medieval Style Dress by Katrinshine


4. Felted white scarf by LenaBaymut


Congratulations to our amazing winners!!!

You can check out all of the contest entries in our Team treasury.

posted by TonyaUtkina