#15  Advent calender and Felt bow

#15 Mia's advent calender

Keeping with the Christmas traditions, we wanted to make Mia an advent calender.

Instead of buying a cardboard/chocolate one (I couldn't find one anywhere) we decided to make one.

We got our inspiration from a tutorial from Design Sponge.

They have a print out of these little Christmas crackers on their site here.

So we printed out the template onto some white and blue card stock, 

cut out the crackers and tied them up.

We weren't sure how we were going to hang them up but then we remembered seeing some photo's of people hanging up their stockings on a tree branch so we decided that was going to be how we hung up our treats!

Here's what it looks like:

I also decorated it with a strand of sewn garland.

Here's Mia opening her daily gift!

Now Mia looks forward to opening her treat at the end of each day!

#16 Felt bow

Most of my Christmas crafts have been done using felt.

This is one more to add to the list.

This is going to be a felt Christmas bow.

All you'll need is a sheet of felt, a glue gun or a needle and thread.

I used a needle and thread but it may be easier to glue it.

First, I cut out three long strips, three more slightly shorter, 

two an inch shorter than that and one even shorter piece.

There's no definite measurement as long as you have nine strips.

First, you take one of the longer pieces and fold it so that the ends match, then sew it.

Then you do the same to the next piece, only add it on top of the first one.

Keep doing the same thing for the next pieces.

The last strip was tricky, but I just sewed one side first, then the other side.

That's it! 

You could also use fabric or paper for this project.

I'm officially caught up!

This is the 16th project on December 16th!

Have a great weekend! 

I'll meet you back here on Monday with some more crafts!

Felt bow tutorial.

It's finally Friday! 

Which means it's the last blog post for the week.

This is a super simple tutorial for a felt bow.

All you need for this project is:

- A sheet of felt.

- Scissors

- Hot glue gun w/glue 

- A needle

- Thread (Any color you choose)

- Hair clip or safety pin

First step is to cut out two same sized rectangles out of your felt.

 Place them on top of each other to make sure they're even. (cut the sides if uneven)

After you thread your needle, tie a knot at the end and sew through one corner of the felt.

Then you start stitching around the edge of the felt.

Once you're done stitching, pull the thread through one of the corners like you did in the beginning.

Cut your thread but leave it long enough to tie a knot.

Like this.

Trim all four strings and you should have a perfectly stitched rectangle.

Once it's trimmed and stitched, pinch down the middle and it will start to take the

shape of a bow.

Once you've done that, take your needle and thread and sew through the middle of the bow.

Try to stay in the middle of the bow making sure that the sides of your bow are even.

The more you sew, the tighter the bow will be.

It doesn't have to look pretty since you're going to be covering the middle.

Mine looked like this.

After it's sewed, you're going to cut a thin strip off of the leftover felt sheet.

It doesn't have to be super long, it just has to fit around the bow.

Trim the strip so that it flaps over in the back.

This is where the hot glue gun comes in.

Add your glue to the bottom strip and flap the other one over.

Press until the glue is dry and it should look like this in the back.

Next you're going to add your hair clip to the back.

All you have to do is slide the clip through the back and you're done!

I was going to use Mia to model the bow for me but she was asleep so I had to use

the only other girl besides me to model it.

As you can tell, it didn't really work out.

My only other option was this.

The things he does for love. (Sophia photobombed) 

I still wasn't satisfied, so I took one for the team and snuck a picture of my baby asleep.

There you go, the bow on an angel.

 It's a bit bigger than the others that I've made but you can just cut the felt rectangle smaller.

You can also use a safety pin instead of a hair clip if you want to pin it to your clothes.

The felt flower tutorial here could also be used as hair clips

 or could be safety pinned onto a shirt or sweater.

I was thinking about pinning a small black bow tie to Rigby's collar for Halloween. 

It'll be cheap, easy and comfortable for him to wear since the felt is so soft.

I hope you guys enjoyed this very in depth tutorial.

New post on Monday.

See ya.