Felted Rock Talismans
Amulets Made of Wool and Semi-Precious Gems
I’m entranced by the idea of making felted stones as talismans. Here’s a bit of my process with them.
My recent blog about Cormo wool has a link to an excellent felted stones tutorial: https://www.outlawbunny.com/2016/06/09/felting-cormo-wool/
Once I started making felted stones, it was only a matter of time before I was viewing them as amulets. I’ve a penchant for turning everything into talismans. Shamanism is integrated into my whole life. Mysticism being woven into my meals, my artwork, and the rest of my life feels natural—as much a given as breathing.
I wonder if that last sentence sounds pretentious. I’m not saying I’m more spiritual than other people. For all I know, I’m less spiritual than others, and maybe the reason I’m so integrative with my shamanism is because I need the constant boosts to keep from falling down the spiritual toilet. All I know is: magic’s in everything and every moment, and I can’t ignore that anymore than I could forever ignore eating, sleeping, or singing.
So, as someone who sees magic in a plastic fork, I certainly see enchantment in felted stones, because they’re close to nature.
Wool is a lovely earthy fiber. I feel Gaia’s love in it, and Divine love is definitely magical. This makes it easy to add more blessings. And stones … well, whole libraries have been written on the magic of stones.
Plus hand-felting takes a lot of time, all of it hands-on, which is perfect for blessing a piece. In other words, as I felt stones, I bless them.
For a while, I wondered if it’s possible to felt around really small stones, because I wanted to felt around semi-precious gems. Yup, it is possible. The photo above shows my first three wee, felted stones, which I sent my friend SnowStar (that’s my nickname for her). I used flattish oval beads I believe are obsidian, though I’m not 100% sure. I love their energy.
I made nine more in various styles, with various wools, using those obsidian beads:
In the photo above, one is missing. My cat George probably knocked it away somewhere because, right after I saw George running maniacally from the stones, two were missing. Cats being kin to Faeries, I suspect George gave the stones to Fey Folk. I think they liked the offering, because they gave me one stone back. All is well.
Before I got to make felt more semi-precious gems, I went to Lake Erie, where I gathered beach stones. Since my health usually keeps me from going on outings, you can imagine how special the beach trip was. The stones are fabulous, so had to be the next thing I felted and blessed.
For the first three, I hand-blended merino tops—if memory serves, the colors were Fir Green, bright pink, purple, and cobalt blue—with Cormo wool to make patterns on the stones.
As I was felting, the stones started to remind me of amethyst or fluorite. That’s a funny coincidence: I went from felting semi-precious gems to making felt that looks a bit like a semi-precious gem.
As their felting continued, the stones reminded me more of fluorite than amethyst. Here they are, finished:
I’m an empath, which is valuable to me as a shamanic guide. But I have to watch that I’m not overly empathic. I don’t want to take on other people’s anger or other troubling emotions. Fluorite helps me with this.
I imbued the three stones with a bit of mojo that’d keep me from being too open an empath. I didn’t drench them with that type of power because it wouldn’t suit my present needs. I already have awesome tools I rely on heavily to protect myself as an empath, and wanted the main energetic focus of the three stones to be overall luck.
Inspired by my accidentally fluorite-looking felt, I mixed Cormo with bright pink merino top, hoping for three beach stones that look like rose quartz. Whether they look like rose quartz or not, I imbued them with some self-love energy, along with other mojo. I might make a few more of these as talismans for friends.
Then I dug through a batch of stones SnowStar had sent me. I chose five. Good chance they are—top to bottom in the photograph below—obsidian, two amethysts, one rose quartz bottom left, and a tiger’s eye bottom right.
For each of them, I blended matching wool, except for the obsidian which I felted in black only. Most if not all the wool on these five is from Living Felt. Living Felt’s wool is in a lot of the pieces pictured in this post.
Here’s a pic of those stones felted:
Now I’m felting a set of talismanic stones for a client. Most stones in the set will be semi- precious. Once I finish the set, I’ll blog about it. Subscribe to my free email newsletters to stay up-to-date on my blogs: https://www.outlawbunny.com/newsletter/
