cozy felt Christmas tree garland & $100 Jo-Anns card giveaway

It finally snowed here over the weekend, much to my kids’ delight. We’ve had unseasonably warm weather, which I’ve been loving, but the kids keep telling me it doesn’t feel like Christmas until there’s snow. I’ll admit, there is something about a snowy day that makes me want to turn on the Christmas music and bake or craft. This week I picked a cozy little craft: this simple felt Christmas tree garland. (If you’re working on holiday crafts too, you could win a $100 Jo-Ann Fabrics gift card – more info at the end of the post!)

I saw the photo below on Pinterest a while ago. It leads to the Land of Nod’s website, but the item is no longer available. No worries, since I probably wouldn’t have ordered it anyway, especially when I can make it myself for just a few dollars.

 

I could tell the garland was made from felt, but I couldn’t tell if the pieces were sewn together or not. Since snowy days also tend to make me feel a little lazy I decided to go with a no-sew approach. I felt a bit like a kid doing an art project at school, cutting out my Christmas trees and circles out of felt and gluing them together. It was surprisingly relaxing.

To make your own easy DIY felt Christmas tree garland, you just need inexpensive sheets of acrylic felt in different colors, scissors, and a glue gun (or other adhesive). I wanted my garland to look a lot like the inspiration piece, so I traced the shapes of the trees in Photoshop and printed out a template. (Want it? Click here to download it.)

Fold a piece of felt in half and cut two of the same tree at the same time. Decorate as desired with hearts, circles, or stars cut from felt, then just glue the two trees together, sandwiching a rectangle of brown felt in between to act as a trunk.

NOTE: Make sure not to put any glue at the very tip of the tree – you’ll want the two layers to open up slightly so you can glue a string between them later on.

The striped tree was my favorite. For that one I just cut out one tree, then cut strips of felt in other colors and glued them onto the tree. Then it was easy to flip over and trim the excess strips away, leaving me with a striped tree.

 

 

 

Once I had nine trees made, I glued them onto some string about 6 inches apart to make a garland, perfect for stringing up on a mantel.

Since we don’t have a mantel, I just have it taped up on a wall right now. Cute and cozy, right?

 

 

 

Thanks to Jo-Ann Fabrics for providing me with a gift card in exchange for writing this post!