The holidays are coming and my mailbox is quickly filling with lovely seasonal catalogs from stores tempting me to spend my precious dollars on silly decorations that are over priced. With that said, there's nothing more I'd love to do than decorate my house like crazy for each season that comes. However, my practical side just can't ever find a reason to rationalize spending the money that this kind of decorating suggests.
While perusing through the Pottery Barn Kids catalog I came across this lovely jewel - A Thanksgiving Countdown Calendar.
While perusing through the Pottery Barn Kids catalog I came across this lovely jewel - A Thanksgiving Countdown Calendar.
Each day has it's own pocket to fill with things you are thankful for. I was in love and dreaming of what a fun tradition this could be with our kids in the future. Then I looked at the price tag and my dreams came crashing back to reality...$70 dollars are you kidding me?
Then it hit me, I could make my own, or attempt anyways. So thank you Pottery Barn, for being soo expensive that I'm forced to be creative!
Hope you enjoy my very first DIY project:
Thanksgiving Countdown Calendar
Supplies:
5-6 different remnants of fall colored fabrics (They sell samples of 1/4 yds of fabric at Joanne's for $1-2)
1/2 yd brown felt
1/2 yd yellow felt
1/4 yd red, green and white felt
Crotchet yarn
1 pointy needle with a large threading hole
Tacky Craft Glue
1 leaf cut-out
Lettering (font size 150 and 200)
Chalk (for tracing)
**Disclaimer, I didn't take photos of every single step so use your imagination****
1. LEAVES: Start with the leaves as you will need these to know how big the top of your tree will be. 30 days of November divided by 5 colors of fabrics = 6 leaves in each color. I layered two colors of fabric to speed up the number of times I had to cut and traced my leaf on to the fabric using a sharpie. Then cut them out.
2. NUMBERS: After cutting out all my leaves, I began on the numbers alternating fabrics as I traced. After cutting out all the numbers I used Fabric Stitch to glue the numbers in the center of the leaves and laid them out to dry.
Here is my chart for how many I needed of each number:
1 (12x)
2 (13x)
3 (4x)
4 (3x)
5 (3x)
6 (3x)
7 (3x)
8 (3x)
9 (3x)
0 (2x)
3. LEAFY PART OF THE TREE
Lay out all the leaves in a random pattern over the golden yellow colored felt. Following the shape of your leaves, cut around the outside row of leaves.
Beginning to cut around the leaves...
...finished "leafy" portion of the tree.
4. TREE TRUNK
Lay out your brown felt, place the "leafy" tree portion over top of the trunk felt. I left about a 4-5 inch "seam" for branches.
Using a piece of light colored chalk draw out the shape of the trunk.
The top of the tree trunk I drew five branches, some of which would eventually overlap on top of the leafy portion of the tree. Even the branches that went under the yellow felt, I left a one inch seam to glue to the leafy portion.
4. TREE TRUNK
Lay out your brown felt, place the "leafy" tree portion over top of the trunk felt. I left about a 4-5 inch "seam" for branches.
Using a piece of light colored chalk draw out the shape of the trunk.
The top of the tree trunk I drew five branches, some of which would eventually overlap on top of the leafy portion of the tree. Even the branches that went under the yellow felt, I left a one inch seam to glue to the leafy portion.
5. TREE BASE
Using your green felt, place the trunk on top and trace the shape. Make the base a few inches wider on either side of the tree base (my picture below doesn't show this fyi.) Cut inside the chalk line about a quarter inch, you will need this allowance for stitching the base to the trunk. After cutting out the base shape, using white crotchet yarn, stitch the base and trunk together (see final picture or lettering picture for an idea of what this look likes.).
6. LEAF POCKETS
(You could do this step before cutting out the trunk, but I chose not to as I didn't know where my branches would lay on top and which leaves would lay on top of the branches.)
Using Tacky glue, fix the leaves to the felt. Make sure not to glue the upper portion of the leaf otherwise you will not have a pocket for your thankfulness notes.
For the lettering, I printed off the saying "GIVE THANKS"
in several different sizes of font. Cut out the paper samples, use your trusty sharpie to trace the letter face down on to the felt, and cut out the fabric letters. Then using your Tacky glue, glue them to the trunk.
The next part is optional, since the word THANKS was larger I used my crotchet yarn again to stitch the letters on to the trunk.
You did it! Now find a lovely place on your wall so when November comes you can start the thankfulness party! This part is still not finished on mine, since the tree is rather floppy, I'm going to find a thin dowling rod to attach to the back of the leafy portion and base on the tree to help with the flop factor. I'm also going to sew on a string at the top to hang the tree from instead of using 2 million tacks.
1 comment:
Thanks so much for the inspiration! I've been Googling everywhere looking for a DIY of this countdown tree and your project inspired me to try my own. FYI - I mounted mine on foam board using Mod Podge and hot glued twine on the back to hang from. Worked out great!
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