By Joyce Hazlerig

www.gypsyharte.etsy.com

Materials

Approx 1 oz of core wool

.30g –.50g of various greens or earth tone wool

Locks, yarn, and sparkle fibers

Felting needles Tri 38 or Tri 40 Mulitools help a lot

First bunch or roll your core fiber into a ball or oval and needle all over. The denser you roll your core the less jabbing you have to do with the felting needles. You want to needle it until it resembles a conch shell. Multitool time! Make its go faster.

 Now shaping the hillside as you wish. Mostly round, with a flat face on one side and needle the bottom flat. Make a front yard area by folding a section of core batt.

 

 

Needle it form underneath to attach, now it looks like a melted scoop of ice cream.

Now that we have a hillside its time to landscape it!

 

 Gather all your green wools and layer them in thin sections, you can card them together if you like or simply layer by hand, either way works. I like to do different colors or textures of wools giving the hillside a mossy look, use a little firestar to add a dewy magical sparkle. This is only a thin layer it doesn’t take much wool. Neelde with a single or double 40 or 38 until all the core is covered. You don’t have to do the bottom, less you want to. I like to make my underneath earthy brown, like dirt. An alternate hillside, make one face very flat and fill in with earthtone wool for a cut away gnome home.

 

Detail time. Use a single felting needle and gather some mohair locks and fold in half about three short locks and needle at the fold into a section of the hillside. You can even “plant” the lock bush by adding a little green wool into the middle for security.

 

 

 Add yarn foliage the same way. Next make a window!

 

 

 

 

 Just a little wisp of yellow or white wool. Needled into the hill, do it firmly so that it is recessed. Then add a cross pane and frame.

 

 

 

 Add a Door with a bit of brown wool or any color you want your door. I framed the door with another darker brown. And then added lines and a knob. Here’s a red round door on a different Gnomehome.

 

 

 Add details! Novelty eyelash yarn needle felts into grass and paths.

 

 

 

 Mushrooms and toadstools provide a chimneystack for your gnome. Just felt a stem from brown or white wool and felt a cone shape and attach together. An easy mushroom is to felt a dense ball and then cut it in half to form two mushroom caps. Outline paths and add stones or little lakes. The possibilities are endless! Now you have your own secret world!