What better way to kick of my 12 Days of Christmas than with some decorations to get your house looking all lovely and festive. Here’s an easy felt garland and a tutorial showing you how to make those pretty paper snowflakes.

Felt Garland

My Dad is one of those guys who has a workshop full of every tool imaginable. So when I wanted to make this garland, I thought I’d see if he had a tool I could use to cut the felt. Rather than spending hours cutting circles of felt with a pair of scissors, Dad got this done in about 10 minutes without any hand cramps!

The tool he used is called a wad punch and you simply line it up over your felt and hammer on the end to cut through the felt. You can cut several sheets at once, making quick work of the task.

I used 4 1/2 sheets of felt. 1 each of green, red, lime green and burgundy and a half sheet of white. I had all of these in my craft box. Once the circles are all cut out, simply sew them all together in a long chain. If you pull on the one you have just sewn through as you start to sew the next, it will make the gap between them a bit bigger, if you want small, even gaps, just keep feeding them through.

Using 4 1/2 sheets of felt and circles 30mm in diameter, I got 2 garlands 4m in length.

Paper Snowflakes

These are lots of fun and easy to make. The trick to get them looking realistic (as realistic as a paper snowflake can be) is to fold the paper into 6 sections, not 8. I love that you don’t know how it’s going to look until you fold it open. These are a great project for kids who can use scissors. I loved to make them in the school holidays when I was little.

Take your piece of paper and fold it diagonally.

Open out the fold and then fold the bottom up so that the corner meets the fold line.

Flip it over. Now, you need to fold this into thirds. Use the fold as a guide for the centre and fold one side in and then the other.

They should match up evenly. Now, fold this in half.

Cut off the excess as shown above. There is a flap on the inside you can use as a guide for one end and the fold on the outside for the other.

Now you can get creative and cut out the patterns. Here are two examples.

You can always fold them back up and do some more cutting too. When you’re finished, go over them with the iron to get them nice and flat. Make sure that the iron is dry (steam setting turned off).