Create a Sphere (Ball Form) with Wool - Needle Felting

Today I would like you to make a firmly needle felted wool sphere using white wool and I'd like you to make it the size of a ping pong ball or golf ball. First you will want to lay down some wool on your tabletop. Begin rolling the wool up tightly. Occasionally push in the sides so you roll and then press towards the center so that what you get is a little firmly packed piece of wool that you can then place on your foam mat. Pull in any loose edges. Look for an area that you can poke and without poking your fingers start securing that wool into place. Poke the wool many times before lifting up your fingers because you don't want the wool to spring back apart and then have to restart again. When you do lift your fingers you can start moving around that piece of wool and start working on all sides of it so that you can maintain that spherical form. As you roll around the ball you're going to have some wispy parts that might need to be tucked back over and you're trying to do this as tightly as you can so that your sphere can start firming up and be a little bit more solid. When you look at your sphere if you notice that some areas are taller or wider and it's not looking round enough you're going to want to pay more attention poking the areas that are sticking outwards from that more central lump because again you're trying to make a sphere and as you're going to see as we continue on this sphere is going to become a head. You're going to want to keep poking your wool on all sides hundreds of times so that your sphere can get more firm. Sometimes I even like to roll the wool between my hands and help just get those little wispy pieces to stick down before I start needling it again. Now let's compare the sphere I was just working on with one that I have already finished. Look how squishy it is still. When I squish it it does not keep its form but my previously made sphere when I squish it it just bounces right back so I need to keep working on this new one. It might take a lot of poking to get your sphere firm enough to move on to adding a face and doing something with it. So your second task today is to put a face on your sphere and turn this into a head. You can do this using any color you want and you can try to make your head be the head of a certain animal or character or emoji or you can just wing it and just start with an eye and see where it goes. To create facial features just take a little piece of wool and you're going to start poking it into place where you'd like it to be. Watch as I do my second one you'll see how I take a little bit of wool first and I kind of roll it between my fingers get it into a little bead shape and then I set it down where I want it to go and then carefully I just poke it into place watching my fingers the entire time to make sure I don't poke myself. Try to add at least eyes and a mouth to your sphere today. In review your sphere should be made out of the white undyed wool but you can use any colors you want for your eyes, mouth, and other accessories. Good luck and have fun!