Felt Bay Leaf Garland

This is part two of my felt garland holiday awesomeness. I separated the projects into two posts because this one was much more involved to make. Not hard, just much more time-consuming. I think it came out great, however. Here’s the finished product.

To make a garland like this, you’ll need green felt, cut into leaves, felt balls, and a backing, like the one here (purchased at Joann).

I started out with cutting the leaves. I started out trying to make the leaves identical, but eventually started cutting them freehand. Why, you ask? Because you need A LOT of leaves for this project. If you’re trying to do this and you think  you have enough, keep cutting because I assure you, you do not. It’s also smart to cut a few smaller and larger leaves to use in different places throughout the garland. It looks a lot more put together that way.

Once you’ve cut about one million leaves (seriously though, I probably used more than a hundred) you can cut the length of material you’ll use as the backing. I used this flat cord (no idea what this is called) but you could easily use a long thin piece of heavy fabric, too. Since I wanted it to drape on two sides, I knotted the corners and trimmed the ends to equal lengths.

For the felt balls, you can either make them or buy them. I explain briefly how to make them in my previous post.

Once everything is set, it’s time to get down to business. Start at the top of the space you want to cover in leaves.

Then, slowly glue them to the backing but ONLY AT THE TOP. You want to be able to pick the leaves up so that you can stick others underneath. If you don’t do this, the project won’t work.

Slowly add more and more leaves until you reach the end. Repeat on the other side.

The middle is a bit tougher, but how you do it is up to you. I chose to slowly have the leaves angle in, but you could also just run them straight across in one direction, too. The way I did it, the leaves widen out in the middle. Some are not even glued to the backing but just to other leaves.

A note of caution, however, be careful with the hot glue. It will burn you and bad. I got a few blisters and one place where it just took my skin off. Watch your fingers!

After I finished attaching the leaves, it was time to cover up the knotted corners with a bow. I used a length of burlap, but you can use whatever floats your boat. Simply tie it so that it covers up the backing material.

Next, it is time to attach the felt balls. I cut lengths of the same green felt I used for the leaves to act as stems for the “berries”. Then I glued the felt balls to the end.

When they’re dry, simply tie the end of the felt piece behind the bow so that it’s hidden. You could glue it, too, if you’d like.

I hung the whole thing up on the closet door for a minute so I could go over it and remove any stray glue.

You can see here that it spiderwebs over the felt, so spend some time removing it.

After that, you’re done! I made the garland for the bathroom mirror, but you could hang it pretty much anywhere. Here it is on our bookshelves (looking like an M) and on a frame in our living room.

It’s a very time-consuming process, but worth it for the finished product!