Is It Wrong To Think Felty Balls Are Adorable?!

That sort of sounds odd... and if you just tuned into us here at Meaghan-Marie you may currently be under the wrong impression... Have you seen these felted wool balls? These are from http://www.handbehg.etsy.com/ and she makes these adorable little balls of cuteness. There's just something about them that makes me want to squeal with delight! So much in fact that I purchased the felting wool stuff lastnight and am going to attempt fuzzy ball making this afternoon. I'm so excited about this that when I woke up at 5am this morning I really had to fight the urge to run and get my felting supplies and run to the bathroom to make me some fuzzy balls. I want to make some clips featuring these sweethearts but, I'm afraid after all the hard work of felting combined with their sheer loveability I may not be able to part with them. They're made out of wool, which came from a sheep, so to think of them as a small adorable, round pet isn't all that wrong, is it? I didn't think so either. Some people are so judgemental about things like that. Mr. Pretties is for sure. He came to the conclusion lastnight that he must be the only person insane (according to him he must infact be insane at this point) enough to marry and stay with me. Sure thing Mr. Pretties you just keep on thinking that, there are loads of people who would think my felty ball obsession is completely adorable and a sign of high intelligence. But whatever. Why am I taking offense from someone who doesn't know what a hair clip is or where you put it? I'm not.

Also on my shopping excursion (Read: Trip to Walmart *gag*) I noticed they are clearancing out their fabric section, which in itself makes no difference to me because I have yet to make a fabric purchase there... until lastnight! As I've mentioned, we repainted the kitchen recently. It's light tan with dark brown accent walls. Originally black and white combos were to be the accessory accent. Then I realized how gross it looked and how little it was doing for that room. I then decided we were still going to use the black (Where else would my windup clock go?!) and the cream accents with some chocolate brown. So lastnight I happen to be browsing through the precut pieces for fabric and came across the most gorgeous piece of chocolate brown taffeta. I did infact walk around WalMart petting it because it just felt so good. I have a window mistreatment - the picture is Nester's sisters house with the type of mistreatment I have already (To read more about window mistreating, how to hang currents with a high heel, and how to use your glue gun for almost everything imaginable just out the Nester's Blog http://nestingplacenc.blogspot.com/search?q=sister+mistreatment) but it sort of when wrong when I dyed it. Instead of black it's a rather dismal shade of grey. Very, very, ugly. But I hung it anyway because I was determined it would not look ugly when it was hung. Yeah, it still looked ugly. But by then I really didn't want to go get the hammer again, remove all the upholstery tacks and admit defeat. So I pretend I loved it and that Mr. Pretties was a knob for not being able to see it's greatness. But, now that I have this amazing taffeta I'm ripping that sucker down and retacking this metre long hank of gorgeousness. I plan to hot glue the edges (As in I am not sewing it at. all.) and then purchase some trim (I had some in my hand at Walmart, where the flip did it go?!) and jazz it up - with my glue gun. Nester explains how it is perfectly acceptable to use your glue gun for things like this, and I'm greatful for that since I have two sewing machines both with more attitude than me. Thus, they stay in the closet. One has been grounded in there since the spring of 2006. The other one slightly less, but I think it's on it's way to perma-grounding (aka. the garbage) because it is just too useless. So new, gorgeous window treatments are on today's agenda. Along with recovering the lamp shade in the kitchen with the remaining taffeta (There will be some remaining damnit!) right along with felting some fuzzy balls. Excellent.


I replaced my glue gun lastnight. That's a big deal for me. My old glue gun has been at my side for many important things... scrapbooking, altering BLP some 'Ragamuffin' flip flops, (again, picture courtesy of www.NestingPlaceNC.Blogspot.Com, these are hers, but mine are small, pink & brown and furry. BLP loves hers to death) I lined the insides of the flip flop part (The cheap plastic part) and the toe thinger with chocolate brown minky so they'd be comfy and she always puts them on and says 'Ohhh nice and cozy and wwaarrrmmm...' so I made myself a pair too in black and white and lined mine with black velour. Totally cozy! Love them! Have you noticed yet that I do not come up with original ideas myself? No, no. I wait for someone else to come up with a genius idea and then I figure out how to make it too. Different ofcourse, and to fit my needs. But once in a while it would be good of me to come up with my own genius half-assed idea to share with everyone. One day. I'll work on that, I promise. Anyways... so I bought a new glue gun. It is pink. My old one was also pink. It was imperative that my glue gun be pink, a pink glue gun is conducive with allowing optimum craftability. In addition to that important aspect, it also has to match my pink and brown scissors, my pink and brown paper cutter, and my many, many other pink crafting tools. If it's not pink it just doesn't feel right, and therefore probably doesn't work right. I only replaced the OGG because it was copping some serious attitude about this hair clip brigade I started. It didn't want to put the glue sticks through, it didn't want to melt them, it wanted to get too hot, and then it wanted to melt a whole glue stick at one time pouring the entire molten glue glob all over whatever important hair piece I was working on. That kind of crap is not going to fly around here. Not at all. Not to mention the 50,000 third degree burns I've acquired from this glue gone in the past few months. Most of them my own fault, but still. The time had some where I was concerned that it was getting so hot it was planning to simply melt itself and be done with it all. I did the kind thing and threw it in the garbage. That's a big deal for me too, I don't part with things very often because I feel sorry for them. I did give it a little kiss and a pat on the barrel as a farewell when no one was looking though. I even managed not to get teary eyed. I am making some serious progress here! Although I'm a little concerned that the only reason I'm not such a wuss anymore is because of this little ball of testosterone I'm carrying around, once the Little Boy Person gets here I'm afraid I'll go right back to a sobbing little weiner that feels terminally bad for the little desk lamp at the side of the road on the old Ikea commercial. Yeah. It makes me teary-eyed. Poor, poor little lamp, what did it do to anyone?! You can only hope that doesn't happen or this blog could get pretty disgusting! Just a warning.


I'm off to felt me some balls now (?) but I'll be back later to report how that went. In my head I have images of making these perfect little round balls on the first try. Frequently those images are horribly wrong. I may end up with little felt blobs instead... I need to go find that felting page again and review this process... it involves hot water, soap, and lots of rolling, doesn't sound too hard, eh? We'll see...


I totally forgot an imporant thing! See this adorable little consignment shop? (http://www.littlesproutsturnabouts.com/) The owner has decided to take come of my hair clips on consignment! That means taking a hit on what they're worth when they sell, but since I'm going to be taking some of the Little Pretties clothes in anyway, it would be a great way to pass around the word in an up and coming little shop (It only carries that name brand stuff so it's way better than Once Upon a Child). So that's a fun little tidbit of info that I'm excited about. And don't worry, I'm not even going to mention it to Mr. Pretties (Until I require him to drive me an hour to Hagersville...) so that we don't have to relive the 'That's Nice' debadacle again. Twice in one week will not be tolerated, but since Mr. Pretties doesn't understand that concept I'll just save myself the aggervation and not mention it. All-in-all Mr. Pretties is a good guy, don't get me wrong now, sometimes he just 'doesn't get it', that's all. He is a man after all.

Did someone order a bowl of the most adorable pink and magenta felty balls you've ever seen? That's right, I didn't have to because I made my own! I can't wait to get my card reader for the camera so I can post my own pics everyday. Let me just tell you, those wee little felty balls are adorable and easy to make! A little time consuming I guess, it took me an hour to make like 18 of them, but that's like what 3 minutes each? That's not so bad. My hands feel a little 'rolled out' but that's a small price to pay! Never mind the pride I feel about this. Think of how often this will come up in a conversation! 'I just got my masters degree, I'm so proud of myself!' followed by 'I know exactly what you mean! I just figured out how to make really adorable felty balls!' Uh huh... this might be one of those pridey things I keep for the blog ;)

*To the super nice commenter yesterday I left you a comment in yesterdays box because I couldn't reply via email. If you'd like to contact me through http://www.meaghanmariepretties.etsy.com/ or at MMPretties@hotmail.com that would be super!*