lullubee | Laura Lee Burch

Needle Felted Winter Scene (using new felting techniques!)

For the holidays, I’ve designed a needle felted winter scene and several needle felted ornaments that utilize NEW FELTING TECHNIQUES!!! The first needle felted project is a winter scene…..

Needle Felting with Angelina fiber

This beautiful winter scene of three pines trees and two snow covered deer use Angelina fiber in the creation of the needle felted trees.

Angelina Fiber: This fiber comes in all different colors and can be blended with many types of textiles; when heated it bonds with the fibers creating a beautiful shiny, sparkly effect. You can find this Angelina fiber here or here . These shiny fibers are the perfect extra little something to make your felted creations festive!

Materials list: 25g. green wool, 4 felting needles, sponge (felting surface), .05 oz. green, .05 oz. white, heat bondable Angelina fiber, felting handle, 100g. poly fiber-fill stuffing (pillow stuffing), thread, iron, glue, paint brush, white glitter.

1. With sewing thread, bind poly fiber-fill stuffing into a cone shape.

Approximate Poly fiber-fill/wool breakdown:
Large Tree: 45g of poly fiber-fill/ 9g green wool
Medium Tree: 30g of poly fiber-fill/7g green wool
Small Tree: 17g.of poly fiber-fill/5g green wool

2. Cone ready to felt with green wool.

3. Felted cone (tree). Needle felting is the art of sculpting raw wool with special needles. The needles mesh the wool fibers together, creating a firm and durable form. This craft is surprisingly simple and fun!

4. Felt (poke continuously ) the wool covered cone with the Angelina fiber; it takes patience to felt the Angelina into the cone because it’s a little unruly.

5. Felt the white Angelina fiber (snow) on last.

6. After the Angelina has been felted into the pine trees set your iron to the silk setting and use an ironing cloth while ironing the Angelina fibers. Iron for only a few seconds.

7. Felted, ironed Angelina tree; the fiber changes color once it’s ironed. The finish is stiff and a little “crispy”.

Three needle felted pine trees with Angelina fiber.

Felt the trees in different shades of green for a more interesting look.

8. Paint a little glue onto the deer; sprinkle with white glitter.

Add white or silver glitter to a few deer, rabbits or other foresty friends to make the winter scene come alive 🙂 Put them on a silver platter and use them as a holiday center-piece.

Happy winter crafting!

Laura

Busy Crafting

Mini Books for writing or they can be used as a necklace pendant — Mini Book Kit for writing or they can be used as a necklace pendant

I’ve been super busy the last year….crafting. I guess you could call crafting for a living one of the best jobs ever; I think of a craft project, design it, photograph the tutorial steps, lay it out in a design program to make the tutorial and photograph the product photographs. Tiffany and I have been developing our company Lullubee , adding craft of the month categories for pattern kits, needle felting kits, dolls and puppet kits and teddy bear kits. We’ve been working on marketing the business and getting the word out about Lullubee, sourcing cool craft materials and making product videos and video tutorials.

We’re focusing on the teen and adult market, including seniors. We know that adult children are looking for activities for their elderly parents and we believe crafting is a great outlet for everyone.

Gatsby jewelry — 1920’s-style Tassel Necklace Kit

It’s difficult to juggle a start-up business and our daily mother jobs, Tiffany and I often hear complaints of “Mom, we have no clean clothes” or “there’s no food in the house!” We clean Nutella off of shower doors, pick up clothes and shoes that have been left all over the floor, feed and walk our pets as part of our morning routines to prepare for “work”: a day of post office runs, packing kit boxes, meetings and internet work. We often work strange hours to be able to do both jobs; I work late and Tiffany works early and we often work the same hours even though we’re in two different countries! Did I mention that Tiffany runs our business from NYC and I do my thing from Tel Aviv? Take a look at our social media sites and some of our new products and if you’d share our information with your own networks, it would really help us out:) Thanks!

http://www.lullubee.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Lullubee?ref=hl

http://pinterest.com/lullubee/

https://twitter.com/

Bow-tie Jewelry Kit includes materials for earrings, bracelet, necklace and ring.

Steampunk Earring utilize real watch parts — Steampunk Earring Kit utilizes real watch parts

Au Revoir 2012-Needle Felting Tutorial Gift

reflection — Bear with me while I reflect on the last year……..

I started this post by listing what I considered my accomplishments and important “stuff” that happened this last year, but decided that was boring and if you really wanted to know that, you could read several of my past posts. Reflecting back on the past year’s events, I saw a pattern that I’d like to share with you: One thing leads to another. It may not seem very profound, but when something “bad” happens, I try to figure out what “good” -if any-resulted from the event in the first place. When I closed my store almost 3 years ago, it was a big loss for me in many ways but recently I’ve started to see good things come from that 5 year store experience. The life experience, the people I met, the skills I learned and the work that I produced seem to have made a path for me that I’m now walking. You just never know what’s going to happen in life!

I’d like to wish my readers a Happy Hannukah, a Merry Christmas and a healthy and peaceful New Year! Now imagine that I’m handing you a present with a pretty bow on top, open it and you’ll see my gift to you, a needle felted gnome and his pet hedgehog tutorial:) Needle felted gnome and Hedgehog tutorial

needle felting — Needle felted gnome and his pet hedgehog Spike

You can find more needle felted kits on my lullubee site, the kits comes with everything you need to make the projects and detailed instructions.

Summer, Vacation and Crafting

It is once again summer, the girls are out of school and we’re getting ready to go to the United States for awhile. I never get excited about these trips until I’m actually there and I see my family and friends. There’s so much to do to prepare and in my mind, my work continues even if I’m not sitting here doing it. When I’m traveling, I’m always thinking about what great photos I can capture and how to use them and what cool things or people might inspire me and what’s new out there in the crafting and art world. I’m planning on packing some special crafting supplies I’ve collected and some felting supplies so I can work in my “down time”. Yeah, I know that vacation is supposed to be all about down time, but our trips to the United States seam anything but. We travel to several states to visit various family and friends and we seem to be constantly on the go-5 weeks of that is tiring. This year will be my 30th high school reunion in Indiana, so I’m especially looking forward to that.

laura lee burch — Summer flowers in bloom

It seems that eating is one of our main activities when we go home (which I hate) but Doron and I plan to eat every meal possible at a Mexican restaurant, and we plan on washing all that Mexican food down with salty Margaritas (Mexican food is one food that is sorely missing here in Israel and it’s my favorite!) We’ll be meeting my oldest and best friends in Michigan again this trip, we’ve rented a giant house that we’ll all stay in for a week and hang out on Lake Michigan. The big house is called the asylum because it used to be a mental institution many years ago; I believe we’ll get a few spooky adventures from this as all the kids (5 teenagers and 5 little kids) have watched way too many scary movies and they’re planning some sort of spook-fest!

The last two years since I closed my store here (A.S.-after store) have been a time of finding my artistic self and deciding exactly what I want to do. Without the employees and the big space, I didn’t want to try to recreate what I made at the store by myself but I kept making toys (by needle felting) because I just never stopped doing this. My needle felting work keeps evolving, I developed more techniques and taught more classes and I continue to sell my toys and costume accessories on my Etsy site. I’ve also been planning some large, needle felted work and will I’m veering towards exhibiting my work and all that that entails.

BUT, when I was in Rome a month ago, my crafting buddy Tiffany called me and suggested we start a new company. WHAM (I’m visualizing a cartoony, Roy Lichtenstein image here!) Her idea was to start a subscription DIY craft kit company, based on our combined love of crafts, my designs and artistic skills and her business and marketing skills. Finally, the like minded partner that I always knew that I needed had come up with a GREAT idea. And so it began, phone calls and umpteen e-mails back and forth from New York to Tel Aviv and vice a versa. Ideas have been racing across the world and have been evolving and materializing on my computer screen. It’s pretty hard to believe what we’ve put together in the last month and I’m looking forward to the development in the upcoming months! You’ll still find needle felting based posts here on my Laura Lee Burch site, but you can see my craft inspired posts on the lullubee blog: here. The site will officially launch in the fall, so I’m very pleased to announce to you dear readers, my new site:

http://www.lullubee.com/

https://www.facebook.com/Lullubee

http://pinterest.com/lullubee/

lullubee is a crafting company, we sell monthly craft kit subscriptions, craft kits for adults and kids are always available for purchase. The kits come with great, easy to follow tutorials and links to video tutorials by Moi! We offer kits for birthday parties, patterns and tutorials in case you have your own materials and one of a kind artist pieces. What makes lullubee different from other craft sites is that you can choose your kits (no surprises) and we offer more than just assembly in a box. Our kits offer high quality and sometimes hard to find materials and you’ll never find a store bought pom-pom included in a kit box but you will find yarn and instructions for how to make your own big, fluffy pom-pom. We offer a diverse range of kits, from beautiful and elegant, beaded crowns for birthdays, bat mitzvahs, weddings and other special occasions to classic sock monkeys. So, Craft to it!

sock monkey — Sock Monkey Kit on lullubee

I want to let you know about another beautiful and crafty site that I like: Silver White Winters by Caroline Froberg. I’ve been following her for awhile and especially like her “wooly” articles. I think our two environments are exact opposites because I’m in hot, sandy Israel and Caroline is in cold, snowy and friendly Denmark (the friendliest country I’ve EVER visited!) She’s having a give-away, a chance to win some crafting supplies, please take a look! http://silverwhitewinters.com/2012/06/16/competitiongive-away-20/