diy felt christmas tree tutorial

 

Oooooh, my first do-it-yourself tutorial ever. In keeping with the season, I thought I'd share the first Christmas craft I've done this year, and well, ever.

As I was browsing for ideas for our radical Christmas turned slightly radical Christmas, I ran across some felt board inspiration. I love felt crafts, because they are so easy to do. I saw somewhere that someone made a felt Christmas tree. I can't remember the site I saw it on, and I didn't bookmark it!  But there are plenty of felt Christmas trees out there on the web if you need some inspiration. The one I saw was big, and was meant to be interactive. I knew this would be the perfect "toy" for my kids to play with. They love hands-on things as most kids do. Besides, as soon as we got our tree up, we knew it would be like one big temptation every day. They've actually done great at keeping their hands off the real Christmas tree, but this gives them something to keep them busy. Perfect. Let mama sit for a while, thank you!

This is so easy, you don't really need a step-by-step. The only materials that are required are the felt, a good pair of scissors, and whatever you will use to keep this tree to the wall. Since felt sticks to felt, the glue gun is optional only if you want to embellish your decorations. Here's a breakdown of what needs to be done:

1. Shopping Trip! Buy about a yard of green felt for your tree. You can make this Christmas tree any size you want. I wanted mine to be tall enough and wide enough for three kids to sit side-by-side so they could all play together if they wanted to. Trace (you can use chalk or marker) or eyeball your Christmas tree shape and cut. Make sure you leave a trunk if you're into that sorta thing.

Just find a blank, low space on the wall of your choice.

2. Do-it-up! Set-up your tree. I couldn't talk Mr. Handsome into letting me tack it, or nail it. He said something about holes in the wall and holes in the kids' feet. Some people just suck the fun out of everything, huh? Well, in an effort to compromise and save the precious feet of this house, we opted for scotch tape, which actually works okay. It's up to you to decide.


3. More shopping! Buy some different colored pieces of felt to make decorations for your tree. I bought a pack of different colored felts from Walmart for probably five or so dollars. You'll have plenty left over for other crafts.

The variety pack at Walmart has a bunch of different colors.

4. Got yo'self a gun? Decide on the decorations you want to create. I mostly copied the ideas from the original pictures I saw. There were different sized presents, lights, ornaments, and a star. You can get as detailed as you want. Maybe you can even make some sort of garland if you've got a lot of spare felt laying around. I made sure I made plenty so everyone had enough options to choose from. If you don't want to pull out the ol' hot glue gun, just keep them plain and simple. The kids won't know the difference, but if you like guns then go ahead and go crazy! I did, and I think they add a lot of fun details to the tree.

A few of the lights, ornaments, presents, and the star.

5. Surprise the kids! I waited til the two older ones went to bed, set it up, and let the baby try it out. After she gave it the seal of approval, the girls woke up in the morning to a fun Christmas surprise. They all loved it. They all have fun taking their turns, demolishing each others creations, and it keeps them busy.

In the testing phase.

 

The seal of approval face.

Mom, I thought this was MINE.

Oh, there's room for everyone.

Even fun for 7yr olds.

That's it! Tell me that's not easy. I'm going to just fold this up and stick it in with our Christmas decorations when we store them until next year, and it will already be good to go. Man, I'm cool.