Christmas is nearly upon us. As you can probably tell from my previous posts, I’m not one for traditional décor, and that extends to my Christmas decorations. At Darling Lovely Life HQ, there’s not a splash of red or green in sight. Tinsel? Nah. We’ve been crafting our Christmas, first with this sparkly bunting and drink stirrer tutorial, then by making our own floral Christmas crackers and now we’re putting the finishing touches on the tree with these adorably creepy felt decorations!

You will need

♥ Assorted sheets of felt in your chosen colour scheme. Black and white felt with adhesive backs are both handy for things like eyes and outlines.
♥ A pen (preferably close to the colour of your felt, but I’ve marked mine in ballpoint so you can clearly see what I’ve done)
♥ A small pair of scissors
♥ A needle and white thread
♥ Thin ribbon (for the hangers)
♥ Decorations like buttons, ribbons, pipe cleaners, bows etc.
♥ Cardboard to make your own templates
♥ Soft toy stuffing
♥ Your imagination

Step one

Draw and cut out a template for the main body of your decoration. This could take a few goes but try to make it as symmetrical as possible. Put the template against the felt and draw around it twice.

Step two

Cut out the two templates for the main body of the decoration.

Step three

Measure out your soft toy stuffing and put it aside. You will almost always need more than you think you do.

Step four

Cut out any smaller felt decorations and add ons.

Step five

Choose one of the two duplicate main pieces to be the front (if you have lots of time, you can make both sides of the decoration identical) and sew your decorations onto the side without the pen markings. The beauty of this is that you don’t have to be the best at sewing, rough stitching (as you can see) adds to the charm of the home-made decorations.

Step six

Sew together the front and back of the ornament, filling with soft stuffing as you go to keep its shape. Sew until a small hole is left and then insert as much stuffing as you would like. The more you put in, the longer the decoration will keep its shape, although be careful not to put too much pressure on the stitches.

Step seven

Sit back and enjoy your work for a moment

Step eight

Cut a small length of ribbon and sew it firmly to the top of your decoration in a loop.

Step nine

Hang on the Christmas tree or around the house. Any non Christmas-specific decorations can be reused later in a child’s room or just as decorations around your home.

And here are some more we made…

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – and here at Darling Lovely Life, we do love to have a crafty Christmas. This week’s tutorial is all about ditching tradition, getting rid of cheesy crackers with rubbish toys and groan-worthy jokes and replacing them with fabulous, goody-filled novelties.

You will need

♥ Luxury wrapping paper with a pattern of your choice. We’ve used leftover wallpaper below just for the demonstration but wrapping paper sticks a lot better.
♥ A ruler
♥ Toilet roll tubes (you can buy cracker middles at Hobbycraft too)
♥ Cracker snaps (we got ours from Hobbycraft)
♥ A pen
♥ A glue stick
♥ A paper perforator
♥ Ribbon
♥ Gifts for the inside of your cracker. This is where you can get really creative and give loved ones great surprises – lipsticks, nail polishes, jewellery, personalised jokes or fortunes, fabulous sparkly crowns – this could be the cracker that really pays out!

Step one

Measure and cut a 20cm x 30cm piece of wrapping paper.

Step two

Put the tube in the centre and mark where the edges rest. Using the ruler, draw two lines there.

Step three

Stick a cracker snap length wise across the paper (as pictured below) avoiding gluing the actual part that snaps.

Step four

Put your tube back in (filled with your goodies), roll and glue. then gently twist the ends.

Step five

Tie a little ribbon on each end et voila – you have a cracker!