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

How to make felted wool acorns - Monday Tutorial

Felted wool acorns are ideal for decorating homes, offices, back yards and even a Christmas tree. They make our homes look cozy and welcoming. Felted acorns are quite popular and one can buy them either on the Internet or at a farmer's market. But how about creating a few wool felted acorns yourself?

A sunny winter day is ideal for a stroll in a park and almost every park in America has oak trees. Don't just spare your walk! Collect a few large acorn cups that will be later used for creating felted acorns at home!

So how do we start?
Since we already have a few acorn tops we will now need some felting wool. It can be purchased on the internet or in any Ben Franklin store in your city. Apart from wool we will need regular soap and hot water. I usually try to use wool of as many colors as I can find as it helps to create a whole array of multicolored, bright and vivid acorns.

The creation process starts with felting. I normally take a small piece of wool make it into a soft ball, wet it with hot water and add some soap to it. After squeezing and rolling the ball between my palms for good 10 to 15 minutes wetting it and adding soap from time to time I get a felted firm ball that could be gently squeezed into an oval to look like an acorn.

Hang on! We are almost done! The last step is to connect our acorn cups to felted wool ovals. To do this we will need to make holes in our acorn cups. To connect acorn cups I use a mercerized cotton thread. This type of thread is very strong. Chances are slim it will ever tear apart. The thread enables us to hang acorns anywhere we like.

I personally like acorns to be of different shapes and sizes. They look genuine as they pretty much are. Bright wool colors make them look festive and jolly. Felted wool acorns are beautiful, durable and could be used in many ways. They add color and style to one's house and make it look cozy and friendly. They are a perfect gift for anyone you love or care about!

If you like hand felted scarves, brooches, hats, jackets and home decor items you might want to check out these wonderful shops by our Russian Artists team members:
AleksandraRoo
allmadewithlove
Beautyland
CityCrochet
dalmmar
frenchfelt
FunEmbroidery
galafilc
JaneBoFelt
jezek
JuliaFelt
manonknits
SilkMagic
soroka
Svetusha
VitalTemptation
YanArt
woolsolution

This article was written by TonyaUtkina at CityCrochet