Soot sprites (aka Susuwatari) are magical spirits that are made of soot! One of my favorite movies is Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki. They are featured in this movie as little helpers that enjoy candies (aka Kompeitō) that we also will make in this tutorial. I want my very own soot sprite friends, so let's conjure some up!
First, you need to start with a bunch of black yarn. You're basically going to make your own pom-pom that will turn into a magical soot sprite.
Now you need to take the yarn and wrap it around four fingers, as the video below shows.
Once you have wrapped it quite a few times, not too tight enough that it hurts, but tight enough to hold together. Make sure it's going to be thick enough to really puff out. Separate your fingers and take a piece of yarn and tie it around the middle very securely.
Now very carefully cut the top and bottom, as the video shows below.
Once all the yarn is cut you need to really secure the middle before the puffing out process. Use a second piece of yarn that is long enough that you can make a loop for hanging.
Puff out that soot into a ball! Once it's a ball shaped, you can use the long piece of string to tie a loop.
Now it's time for the transformation to a soot ball to a soot sprite! Eyes! Get some googley eyes and glue, size is up to you!
Glue each eye on the ball and you now have a soot sprite!
At this point you can just hang one of these cuties up as an ornament on it's own, or you can move to the next step and fancy it up a bit!
(AND to make it a bit fancier, add some candies.) First cut a piece of felt of any color into a circle that is just a bit bigger than the soot sprite.
Kind of flatten the back of the soot sprite and glue it onto the felt circle.
Now for the candies!
I started with some little clay cutters I found at the craft store. I wanted the specific shape that looks like the candies they eat in Spirited Away, as pictured above. (If you don't have a cutter, you can also hand shape the candy.)
I used air dry clay, but you can use oven bake clay too. You must roll out the clay and then like cutting out cookies, use the cutter to make the candies.
Once dry or baked and cooled, it's time to add some color!
I tried to pick colors that matched the movie and I think it's nice to have a good variety of color. They are a bit hard to paint because of the small size. The easiest way I found to paint them is to put them on masking tape first, which will be easy to peel off of. Then painted them with a few coats, letting it dry between layers.
Once dry you can peel them off the tape, and they're ready to be a fun addition to the ornament!
Work on the placement, arrange them how you want and then using glue attach them. I liked to use a variety of colors and spaced them out a bit. Once dry you have a fun soot sprite ornament!
So now you can hang them up, whichever style you chose.
Bonus variant!
If you have some empty clear ornaments, you can float a soot sprite in it!
(Unfortunately, I don't have as many pictures of this process, but I will explain it as best as I can.)
Below are the ones that I used, clear plastic. They can be found at craft stores, glass or plastic in several sizes.
Make the soot sprite as directed about, but without making the loop. Take the top of the ornament off and make sure the soot sprite is really fluffed out.
I opted to make the candies and put some in the empty ornament. (If you choose to do this, paint the back of the candies too!) You can put a lot in or a little, they are just a nice touch. Now stuff the soot sprite into the ornament carefully, make sure the string stays out. Hold it up and adjust the position of the soot sprite so that it's in the middle of the ball, and then glue the string to the lid of the ornament. Reattach the top and you now have a floating soot sprite ornament!
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