DIY: Felt Christmas Tree

In an effort to keep London is the holiday spirit, but save our glass Christmas ornaments, I was inspired to make a “play tree”. A quick Pinterest search would show flat trees, hung on the wall that the kiddos can decorate. I wanted to up the ante. (disclaimer: If I could sew, I would have sewn the felt…however, I cannot, and I used an excessive amount of hot glue).

First up, supplies:

• 2 sheets of poster board (I used white, but it’ll be covered, so you could use any color)
• lots of hot glue sticks and glue gun
• an excessive amount of green felt (I bought two of the bags at Hobby Lobby, but ended up only needing one, they’re approximately the size of a sheet of poster board)
• yellow felt
• masking tape
• mini felt ornament kits (I found mine at the target dollar spot, but you can snag one here)
• scissors
• fabric paint
• velcro

I am sure there is a much easier way to do this first step, but I was making it up as I went along. I shaped the poster board into a cone (it wasn’t even), and taped the crap out of it. Then, I fit the second piece into a cone, and overlapped it, so that it had a mildly even bottom, and aggressively taped that, too. I used scissors to trim up the bottom, so it sat relatively flat. Sorry I don’t have any photos of this process, since I was literally wrestling with tape and the poster board on the living room floor.

I draped the green felt over the cone, and got it to a good fit, and trimmed up the bottom. I saved the scraps. (It only looked good on one side at this point). Next, I hot glued all along the edges of the felt, so it stayed on the poster board. I repeated the process with the leftover felt, until the other side looked presentable. I trimmed the excess felt from the bottom.

I cut a star out of the yellow felt, and attached some velcro to the back, and perched it on the top. Once the hot glue had dried, I pulled off all the stray strands of glue.

After the great battle of the felt, it was time for the fun part! Peyton hopped up on the counter, and we began decorating the little felt shapes with fabric paint. These would become our ornaments.

I let them dry overnight, and first thing this morning, I attached the velcro to the back of the ornaments, and got the tree set up for London. It was an obnoxious process, and I felt like quitting when I was wrestling with the poster board, but I had to admit, I was pretty impressed with the final project.

And I think London was, too!