A few weeks ago I did a quick and easy tutorial for moustaches on a stick (which, if you didn’t know, are très à la mode these days as well as being great for a fast escape or some on-the-side spy work during your lunch break). Everything is, of course, better on a stick. Consider caramel apples, kebabs, those ginormous lollipops you were allowed to have like, once during your entire childhood and it was bigger than your head and you never quite finished it and the edges got all fuzzy but it was still pretty much the best thing ever. Stuff on a stick just rocks.

So. Moustaches. On sticks.

This is a tutorial for moustaches on a stick once again, but of a more convincingly hairy variety. Sort of akin to that fuzz on the giant lollipop, but in a more positive way, being as moustaches are supposed to be hairy.

You may want to do a quick readthrough of my other two tutorials involving needle felting before trying this one out. Or don’t, and just give it a shot, make it up as you go, and try not to stab yourself with the felting needles. Because ow.

What you’ll need:

• raw wool rovings in various moustache appropriate colours (Hint: pink is most definitely a moustache-appropriate colour)
• yarn or embroidery floss matching your wool colours
• thick foam (for doing your needle felting on top of)
• felting needles (Always good to have two, in case you break one. Also, they come helpfully in multiple sizes.)
• bamboo skewers (aka sticks)
• scissors
• hardened felt, or cardboard, or those sheets of rubbery foam they sell in dollar stores
• superglue
• spray fixitive OR hairspray
  

Putting it all together:

1) Start with a strip of wool roving a bit longer than you’d like your moustache to end up. You may want to mix a couple of colours together, or you can just use one.

2) Tie a piece of similarly coloured yarn or embroidery floss around the middle of your rovings. Trim the ends and, with a few stabs of the needle (Note: do this and all other needle felting on top of your thick foam), mix the ends in with the wool. This is the back side of your moustache.

3) Flip the roving over. From now on you will only felt from this side. Stab the wool repeatedly, getting it to felt together and take the shape you wish your moustache to have.

This is where you can check out those other needle felting tutorials for some tips and details on the process.

Don’t mess around too much with needle felting the tips of your moustache – we’ll use the hairspray to shape those bits later on.

4) Add a little more wool over the front of the moustache where the yarn shows. Tack it down with your needle to cover up the yarn.

5) Cut a piece of hardened felt or cardboard or dollar store foam stuff that is a bit narrower and a bit shorter than your moustache.

6) Apply superglue to one end of your bamboo skewer and place that end on one side of the back of your moustache. Then apply glue to your felt/cardboard/foam stuff cutout and place that on the back of the moustache overtop of the skewer. Press down. Allow to dry completely.

7) When the glue is dry, go outside and douse your moustache with spray fixitive or hairspray. This will allow you to shape the ends of the moustache – give them a twirl if you’d like – and to make the whole thing stay in place and keep its shape.

NOTE: Let the whole thing air out and dry before you “wear” it. The superglue/fixitive combo is more likely to give you a massive headache than any kind of high.

The thanks for this project goes to my mother, who tried out the technique in the first place. She and Rosco now both appear to be convinced that they’re Yosemite Sam.