Since it is our first year “doing Waldorf”, creating a nature table is a new thing for me.

Our first nature table was for Autumn, and at the time I liked the idea of adding a felt ball mobile, in Autumn colours, to hang above the nature table to bring the scene all together, and also to represent the falling leaves. A few months later, I decided to do the same thing for our Winter nature table, this time as metaphor for the falling snow and rain.

Both times, I admit, all I did was string pre-made felt balls that I had purchased through Winterwood Steiner Inspired Toys onto transparent string and attach them to some driftwood. Voila! Easy as. This time, for our Spring nature table, I decided that it was time to stop being so lazy about it and make my own felt balls to create my seasonal mobile from scratch.

Today’s blog post is the first of a three-part series sharing a few simple Waldorf crafts you can do when first starting out, and which are perfectly suited to the task of adding some whimsy and homemade charm to your new nature table!

This felted ball mobile craft was just my speed, as there was surely not much that could go wrong: it wouldn’t take much time to make and, once completed, I could point to it with pride and feel like I had accomplished something creative. I have been searching for small creative wins lately as I make my way back to creativity after many years of its neglect (more can be read about that here).

So, behold! Here it is folks, in all its imperfect glory.

The wreath that holds the piece together was made using some vines taken from my mate’s garden a few months back (if you follow us on Facebook, you may remember me asking for suggestions on what to do with her kind offering). I weaved these together and then we picked some flowers from the garden, threaded them through, and wore them as crowns for awhile.

Next: the felt balls. These were not hard to make at all. I ordered pastel coloured wool from Winterwood and chose four colours that most shouted out “Spring!” to me from within that selection. I set myself down one night, watched this video tutorial on making felt balls, and churned them out one by one. Big Daddy even had a go at making a few, bless his socks. The only problem I encountered was avoiding cracks. The creator of this video reckons you just need to bash the balls with your bottle of soapy water to get rid of the cracks…yeah…that didn’t work here. It just made them more cracked. I tried a bunch of different things to avoid having noticeable cracks throughout and a few balls turned out better than the others, but I think this was mostly just luck more than anything else. No biggie really, I don’t think the cracks are all that noticeable on the actual mobile.

I will work on perfecting my felt ball making skills over time – I have a feeling this will be far from the last time I make them.

If you are more expert than I at felt ball making, leave me your tips below! I’d be most grateful. Especially since I probably should get started at making my summer nature table mobile any day now!

Have a wonderful week, wonderful people. 🙂

With blessings to you and yours,

Robyn