Alien Vegetable and Felt balls

Yesterday I went to a workshop at Stitchncraft in Shaftesbury with Heather Kingsley-Heath doing needlefelting and beading. It was very enjoyable - one or two people made finished pieces but as always I was very slow but made some needlefelted shapes that I will get round to beading sometime. Heather then told us how to make felted balls and I really loved that and came home with a little pile - so quick and easy and they actually come out round! I want to make some more and then actually make a project with them but unfortunately I've been having a lot of problems with my arms and shoulders lately and making the balls was a step too far. I'll have to wait till the pain goes before I risk another go. I also need to let my hand recover - my fingers were nearly shredded from the number of times I stuck the needle in them. We were warned to take care and no one else seemed to be wincing so it must just have been me who's completely ham fisted!

As I walked back to my car I spotted this vegetable in a local greengrocers. Unfortunately I forgot to note the name but I gather from the lady who sold it to me that it's a cross between a cauliflower and broccoli. Isn't it fabulous! I've never seen one before so I had to take a load of photos and my daughter's already planning to get the pictures into every project she does at art college from now on! I'm just slightly worried that I am now sharing the house with some alien life form....

Poppy Heads

So this is what I want to be able to do - finally!
I want more time to be able to play about with projects like this, leave them lying around while I decide what to do next, come back to them when I'm ready and really work through ideas. I'm very pleased with this but I expect it will be ages before I produce something else along these lines.
I started off by playing with needlefelting -can't afford/don't have room for an embellisher but it's surprising what results you can get very quickly just using hand needling. I used butter muslin laid over a bit of wadding and then wool roving. After it was done I decided to paint the background! Each stage of this I decided to paint afterwards instead of first as I would have done if I'd had any sense! Also added beads to the flower centres.
Then I wanted to have a go at fabric paper following the instructions in Beryl Taylor's book 'Mixed-Media Explorations'. I have tried this before but the paper came unstuck from the backing fabric after a while. I don't know what I did differently apart from using butter muslin as the backing this time instead of calico and the piece is well and truly stuck. However I stuck the needlefelted piece on at the same time - as I was doing it I knew it was a mistake but I kept going - why? Anyway, I managed with it like this though it would have been easier to attach it later. I used stamped scraps from my scrap drawer (always makes me feel virtuous) and then added more stamping along with drawing inks over the top. The poppy head is a rubber stamp and for the centre piece I stamped it and enlarged it on my copier then traced it onto handmade paper and stitched and beaded it. Then I added the colour! I stitched it onto the background with oversize, uneven cross stitches then added more over the rest of the piece to tie it all together. The photo shows it cropped beautifully to a finished piece but in reality I haven't yet decided how to finish it off - I think it would look nice in a frame painted dark blue - if I ever get round to it.