Catnip Christmas Trees – Felted Needle Toys for Cats
Hope you all had a delightful Thanksgiving. If you were brave/foolish enough to go out for some black Friday shopping, it’s good that you made it back home safe and weren’t trampled by hoards at Walmart looking for the Furby Boom/Xbox One or whatever it is you absolutely needed to have today instead of waiting like a rational person and shopping online at amazon.com on Cyber Monday.
I am working on a few projects for the holidays, including these felted-needle catnip-filled cat toys. I’m using a foam pad, a single needle and a bundle needle, wool roving and a regular old cookie cutter for the shape.
The wool roving goes in the cookie cutter and is then pierced over and over with the needle until it’s felted flat. I put the brown for the trunk in on top of the green and felt it all together.
Then I remove the cookie cutter and do the embellishment on top.
You’ll need to make two trees for this, then felt them together (finished side out, of course) except for a space on the side large enough to fill with catnip.
Don’t try to shake the bag of catnip directly into the felted bit, as the nip will go all over and then you’re picking catnip pieces out of the felting, which is really obnoxious.
After it’s full, put the tree back on the foam pad and felt closed that remaining side.
I’m also going to do a few gingerbread men in the same fashion, and finish up with wet-felting round balls. Maxy loves to chase those all over the house, even more than playing with the catnip toys.
Smartykat catnip is organically grown. If you watch where your wool roving is coming from, making your own cat toys is preferable to getting in Chinese-made crap with who knows what in/on it. If you’ve ever picked up a loved-on cat toy, you’ll feel how wet and spitty it gets…anything on them is going right into your cat’s little body.
Like animal projects? Check out these past posts:
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