How to make...

  

Sorry I didn't give more details on my felt tree post today! I had to post and run at the time! I thought I'd put together a general tutorial on how to make one.

First I wanted to give credit to my initial inspiration for these (b/c it is one of my pet-peeves when people don't give proper credit... grr.. i've seen this happen so many times to other people, and even me... and it just makes me so sad. I try very hard to always give proper credit! although unfortunately with all of the things i bookmark, i do lose track sometimes where i got the idea in the first place. But very very rarely.) 

My inspiration for this actually came from a project (no surprise!) from Emily Martin/The Black Apple last year. I had the idea of making these felt trees in my head this year, and knew the concept was hidden in my subconscience from SOMEWHERE, and then i remembered her trees from last year. :-) But after looking at them for the first time this year, i realized they're pretty different! But same concept...

I wish I could provide some patterns for the felt pieces, but #1, as I've mentioned, I don't trust my pattern making skills, especially when it comes to fabric! and #2, I'm not sure that all styrofoam trees are standard sizes at all craft stores, so the patterns might end up being off depending on where you buy your tree forms.

But essentially the shape will look something like this and get smaller as you layer up the tree:

 

You just freehand cut the scallop along the bottom of the shape. It doesn't have to be perfect, and I sort of like the freehand look: :-)

To start:

1. Cut out your pieces of felt. I used generally 3-5 pieces/colors of felt per tree depending on how layered you want it to look. For each color tree, I used 3-5 shades of one color to show a gradiation of the darkest shade to the lightest shade going towards the top. On some I did a dark-light-dark-light look as well. Whatever worked with the shades of felt that I had. I used wool felt, but you could also use craft felt at craft stores... it's cheaper, but not as pretty, and you won't have the same amount of color shades as you'll find in wool felt.. i got mine online.

The first layer will be your bottom layer. It won't have the scalloped edge b/c it will wrap around the bottom of your tree form. You'll need to snip the area that wraps around like this so that it will fold over with little bulk. Then just hot-glue to the bottom:

 

Then you can glue a circle of felt to cover your bottom completely.

(I used 3 different sizes of tree forms: small, medium and large. So if you do try to make a pattern, you'll need to make a different pattern for each size/shape tree as they will of course differ.) I basically just winged it with each layer of felt... wrapped the fabric around and just cut away til i got generally the shape that i mentioned above. Then i wrapped it around hot-glued, where the ends met, to the tree form, overlapping:

 

 

Since I knew my that my trees would only be seen from the front, i didn't stress too much about how they looked on the back. As you can see, the backs of mine look a bit haphazard. They still look tidy at least. If you wanted, and you know they'll be seen from all sides, you could add a strip of ribbon along the seam on the back like I did here, vertically:

  

 

If you want to be REALLY tidy, you could wait on adding the vertical strip of ribbon, and first wrap your trims and ribbons around the tree horizontally and when you're done with that, you could add your vertical strip of ribbon to hide all of the felt seams/ribbon-ends on the back. Or just leave the felt seams as-is. It really doesn't look bad, as long as you overlap the ends so that no foam shows through. If you're a sewer, you could even sew the ends together on each felt layer and slip over the form!

The great thing about using these styrofoam forms is that you can also pin things to it (as you can see I used lots of pearly colored pins). And that is actually even easier than having to use hot-glue constantly. I'm not a big fan of glueing (i don't totally trust it!), so i try to use it only if i have to. But you'll definitely want to add some hot-glue to reinforce everything.

2. Ok you're done adhering your felt layers, it's time to embellish. You can start adding your trims and ribbons to wrap around the tree horizontally. (or you can leave them as-is with no embellishment! sort of a more modern look) I wanted to embellish, but not overly, still keeping a somewhat clean design (well, clean for ME at least).

I just used various things from my stash.. vintage and new velvet ribbons, vintage lace trim, ric-rac trim (i FINALLY got to use that big pink ruffley ric-rac, wide red and fushcia velvet trims, and the wide lacey/blue/floral fabric trim that I got at Tinsel Trading in NYC this summer!)

 

I also embellished with a vintage doily for the top of the yellow tree, lots of vintage buttons and vintage seam binding. I hot-glued and/or pinned all of these to adhere. For the buttons, I hot-glued them if they had holes.. if they were buttons with a shank on the back, I used a short length of floral wire to lace through the shank, bent the wire in half so that the 2 ends came together, and then pushed through the felt and styrofoam to secure. Wish i had a photo of that, but hopefully you get the idea. You could also cut the button shank off and hot glue it to the tree.

 

I added bells to the tops of my trees or you can leave them plain, or adding a yarn pom-pom would be cute! I had these bells left over from last year that i got for $1 on sale at Target. yay! I liked the combo of the shiny metallic bell with the matte felt. They were ornaments, so i pulled off the ribbon hangers and metal caps so they were just the bell. I then used those metal floral pins you can find at craft stores.. i had a few of those left over from a previous project, but you could also do the floral wire trick i did for the buttons. Same idea. See below:

 

As you can see, I finished off the top of the trees just like i did on the bottoms... you'll snip the top layer of felt, fold over and glue. I then added the little circle of felt to finish it off.

If you happen to make one of these felt trees, please link me up to your projects! Would love to see them! :-)

More holiday decor and projects to come... now to get some much needed sleep. Lol! :-)

Comments

[Bethany]

Oh YAY!! When I saw those trees this morning, I thought "I need a tutorial!!"

Thanks for sharing your crafty fun!!

[kerry lynn]

super cute!
xo

[melissa deakin]

Oh my goodness, Danielle!
These are amazing!
I want to make them right now.
Not sure if I will get to it this year, but I am printing this out for future reference.
BTW...did you use wool felt or just regular felt and where did you find those tiny beautifully colored pins?
Thanks so much!
I hope you are well!

[Séverine]

really really love this !!! it's a very good idea. I think i'll try do to this with my daugther.

[diane reeves]

Those are so cute, thanks for the how-to!

[Holly]

Love this!! I featured it on my 'Much Love Tuesday' on my blog.

http://lovingrobots.blogspot.com

[jess]

i love these! i need to make time to make these...my paper covered styrofoam trees will never do! thanks so so much for the most gorgeous inspiration! merry christmas :)

[Rachel]

Oh WOW! I love these so, so, SO much! The color, the bright cheer...all of it! Swoon! I'll be linking!

[April]

You and I are definitely on the same felt tree wavelength! Here is a pic of a similar tree I recently created a few weeks ago: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3071/3025835133_86139036c8.jpg?v=0.
I love your idea of include a jingle bell on top. So clever!

[Heather]

Simply adorable! found via oneprettything!

[carolbrowne]

This is so great! Lovely idea. I'll be trying to make time to make a few myself. Thanks for the tutorial.

[Carla Cavellucci Landi]

Embelished yet clean, classy yet joyful, contemporary yet vintage... that's Xmas! Thank you so much for the tutorial, gotta run to PurlSoho get some nice felts!

[Christen]

Love this! I love anything with felt, especially when it's super bright and cheery! I will be sharing this with many people! (and giving you credit, of course!) Glad to have found your blog via Craft's newsletter ... I'll be adding it to my blog roll!

[Lu]

I love them and think this is the cutest thing. They are so you!!

[Michelle Clement]

oh, goodness...these are just darling, Danielle!! :) I sooo want to make one right now! Thanks so much for the tutorial! :)

[mclairepatch]

Très joli, bravo

[wendela]

this is really gorgeous! Thanks for inspiration!

[nubet]

so cute! congratulations.

[wishcake]

These are absolutely adorable! The colors are absolutely delightful. If you were able to tell me where you find your felt, I'd hug you. Because my local craft stores have such a shoddy selection. Bleh.

Anyway, well done as always!

[Ana Melo]

So cute =D
thank you