A Happy, Crafty Christmas!

This place is getting the Festivus* Maximus treatment. The living room is adorned with a felt tree, toilet paper ring trees, handprint trees, button trees, a snowflake banner and a few strands of LED lights. While Pinterest provided inspiration for most of these kid-friendly crafts, I needed a tutorial on cutting felt after several frustrating lop-sided star attempts. 

Enjoy the pictures and get to crafting!

* In an effort to ensure that I had spelled Festivus correctly, I GoogleSearched the word and the Great Wikipedia was ABLE to teach MOM for a moment. Ha, funny Festivus. I may actually have to incorporate the Festivus Pole into future holiday traditions. 

While I agree with the purpose and spirit of Festivus, I must admit that my inner Grinch is slowly slipping away as I watch the Spirit of Christmas light up my children's faces brighter than the LED lights. 

Never mind that the usage of Festivus Maximus is probably not correct. The Walls are Decked!

Felt Tree

This idea is all over Pinterest; I pinned this and scrolled down to Craft #3 Play Christmas Tree. I also used the 3M Command Poster strips to attach mine to the wall.

I purchased 1 3/4 yards of green felt on sale at Hancock Fabrics, with an additional discount because it was the end of the bolt. That provided enough fabric for four trees! The total cost, including 10 small felt squares in various colors (and also on sale), was just over $6. 

When I got home, I pulled out my rulers, cutting mat and rotary cutter. I wanted a full-looking, symmetrical tree. This was harder than I expected. I folded my felt in half on the vertical and started with a 45 degree angle. I ended up with some combination of 45 and 60 degree angles after cutting three trees that didn't look quite right. 

I tried to freehand a few circular ornaments and stars before looking for a tutorial on how to cut felt. 

I found round and teardrop shaped ornament templates and then thought to add some of these small bows. Check out more at First Palette Kids' Crafts. They have crafts, art recipes and printables a-plenty! 

I rough cut around a design from the printables, stapled it to two pieces of felt and cut with my budget Staples shears (not the sharpest tool in the box, btw). 

A note about gluing felt. When I tried to use Elmers to glue the "ribbon" strips onto the presents, parts did not effectively stick. I added more glue, and it seems to be holding, but I learned that you can buy glue specific for felt crafting. 

I hope to make holly leaves using a printable and felt frame ornaments with all the leftover scrap green felt.

Toilet Paper Roll Tree

Check out this blog where I found the inspiration for our tree! It was a quick craft. KISSable (now nearly 21 months) has less patience for these sit-down crafts than her big sister, HUGable, almost 3. But they both seemed to have fun and that's all that matters. 

Handprint Tree

I just packed up our handprint wreath in Thanksgiving color and learned a few things from that experience. Preschool teachers must have mad handprint tracing talents as my youngest is squirmy and doesn't like to have her hand pressed to the table while mom attempts to trace.

1. Trace the hand once and then use that as a template for all the other hands you need to make. Otherwise, the handprints will look they they come from two different children. Or a zombie (see also: the Terror vs. The Toddler Theory). 

2. To avoid the sausage finger look, hold the pencil at a slight angle pointed toward the finger. 

3. Hit as many of the finger tips and bases of fingers as quickly as possible then go back and connect the lines between each finger. 

The Pinterest link to the handprint tree curiously took me to Living on a Latte's blog with Christmas tags, but the tree didn't show up. While there, I did find a cute hand (two for the antlers) and foot print (face) reindeer that I definitely need to make, in addition to possibly making a few wreaths. 

Button Tree  

Completed this craft today at Peninsula Fine Arts' Smart Start program. Cut three triangles using green construction paper or card stock. Paste them onto a white background, glue decorative buttons, add glitter. Super cute and glitter!