Isn't she a sweetie? She's all tucked-in to a walnut shell. :) I remembered when I was a kid that my mom & I had made some little ornaments like this, although it seems like we made babies in shells instead of mice. If you want to go that route, it's easy to paint a cute face on a wooden bead to use for the baby face. For the mice I decided to make needle-felted faces. Here's what you need to make the ornaments:
- Walnut shell halves
- Little squares of fabric (about 2.5" square)
- Cotton balls
- Embroidery thread
- Trim
- Silver or Gold chord
- Aleene's Tacky glue
- Toothpicks
- Ball Point sewing pins
- Wool Roving & felting needles
First, I wrapped the fabric around part of a cotton ball. Depending on the size of your shell and how "stuffy" you want your bed to look, you might only need a tiny bit of cotton.
Before gluing anything down, I fit the fabric-wrapped cotton ball into the shell to make sure the size was ok. Then I took everything out, put glue around inside the shell and used a toothpick to help get everything tucked back in.
I picked out some coordinating trim and glued that down to cover the flat edge of the shell.
After I needle-felted the tiny mouse face, I played around with the blanket edge to make sure the she would look sufficiently nestled. Then I cut a little piece of embroidery thread for the tail (all 6 strands) in a color that coordinated with her nose. To keep the strands together, I put a tiny bit of glue on my fingers and twisted the ends of the thread strands together through the glue. To attach the tail I pulled the blanket away from the shell, put a bit of glue in there and tucked the end of the tail in with a toothpick.
I put some glue in the shell where her head would be and placed a loop of silver chord down before I glued the head in. The chord gives you a place from which to hang the ornament. Last, I placed two black sewing pins for eyes. They look pretty cute and they also help to hold everything together tightly while the glue dries.
Now I have a whole bunch of mice on my work table…
You can also leave the trim off if you want to see the edge of the shell. This was my favorite little one…
Happy crafting!
~ k