{PROJECTS // felt flowers}

Long time, no see, right? 

I'm getting tired of making excuses and/or apologies for my lack of posting around here, so I'm saying no more. I fully intend to be back to posting more often, but life is life. And it's busy. So I'll be here when I can. And I'm sorry to leave you hanging when I can't be. 

All that aside, let's talk about my most recent project!

My sister was here for most of January and while she was here we were pretty productive for a change. It's possible that the move into small-town USA and away from the easily-accessible shopping that El Paso offered {read, Hobby Lobby, Target, Goodwill, World Market, etc.} had something to do with that. The point is, we crafted and decorated quite a bit! 

One of the things we decided to make was some felt food for the kids to play with. I may post about them sometime, since they turned out super cute, but today I'm posting about what resulted from getting into felt-crafts. 

Felt flowers. I've had them pinned for a while, but never tried them for various reasons. Which were probably all lame excuses. Anyway, I have a wreath in my dining room that I have been decorating according to season. In the fall, when I got it, I decorated it with some fake leaves. Christmas-time saw it sport some evergreens and red ornaments. And then it was time to decorate for Valentines Day and I was hung up, until I thought about felt flowers. 

And since I had maroon, pink, and white felt, I figured it was the perfect time to try them! So, here's how I made two kinds of flowers by following Pinterest tutorials. I would link them but I lost them, so I'll just show you how I made them.

The first kind of flower I tried was an anemone flower. On a side note, do these flowers exist in real life? I've just never seen one, but they are pretty in felt!

The first thing I want to tell you is that most tutorials used some sort of flower wire or something like that for a stem, but since I was making these to be non-permanent in my wreath, I chose to make flower "picks" by using toothpicks. 

First I hot-glued a pearl bead onto the end of the toothpick for the center of the anemone.

 Then I cut out one long strip of white about 3/4" wide and snipped the one side to make a sort of fringe. On looking back, I should have done the fringe a little shorter, so I would make your white strip 1/2" wide instead. I also cut out nine petals in a teardrop shape.

 Next I glued the fringe on around the bead. I put a long strip of hot glue along the non-fringed side of the white piece and then wrapped it around and around. This gives it a nice, full look.

 Next, glue petals on by adding glue like so,

 and attaching to the pick like this.

 Do four more petals around the inside, and then layer the other five outside petals around the inside petals. I hope that makes sense, because I totally forgot to take a picture of that! But the end result picture should clear that up.

 To finish this flower, I cute a little piece of green felt in a somewhat round shape {it doesn't have to be perfect}.

 Then I poked the end of the toothpick through the middle, glued the top of it, and attached it to the flower base.

 et voila! An anemone flower!

 The other felt flower was obviously not a real life flower but it was still cute, and also a lot easier. I started with this 2" x 6" piece of pink felt. You can make these flowers in any size; I did a second one that was slightly smaller.

I folded it in half width-wise and glued. Then I cut to the hot-glue line from the folded side. Next I attached the one end to the toothpick and wrapped around and around like I did with the fringe for the anemone.

 To finish this one, I cut a round piece of felt and followed the same process as the first flower.

 And that's it! Much easier than the first. I've thought about making some more possibly into headbands for Evelyn or something, but I need more felt first!

 And here's the finished wreath. I was going to make more for it but I ran out of time and thought it looked good the way it was.

This wreath hangs in our dining room above some floating shelves. I know I haven't shown you that room yet in the house tour, and my question to you is, should I restart? Because since the first home tour posts I've rearranged both the living room and the master bedroom {I mentioned about my rearranging bug on my "about" page}. I've already decided that the next room I will show will be the dining room, so I just need some feedback on whether I should just start the tour anew. 

Would that be something you're interested in?