No-Sew Homemade Christmas Tree Skirt

Homemade Christmas tree skirts are easier than you think. Follow these easy steps to create a Christmas tree skirt that fits your family; Star Wars, Winnie the Pooh or any other theme that your family adores.

All you need is felt, puffy paint, acrylic paints, a graphite pencil, scissors, printer and your imagination. All of these supplies, minus the printer, can be found at your local fabric store or (except the felt) a local craft store.

For a standard size 48" tree skirt, you will need four feet by four feet of felt and cut a circle from it. Or, you can purchase a pre-cut felt Christmas tree skirt. Sometimes it is cheaper that way!

Okay, before we select our paints, either acrylic or puffy, we need to decide on the design that best fits your family. I have chosen some online coloring pages to select from. (The idea is you pick your design, preferably a simple one, and trace the lines with a graphite pencil and it will transfer to the felt. Then, you paint/color your felt as you would a coloring page.) Let us look at some designs.

If you are a Winnie the Pooh household, then take a look at these designs: Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Kanga and Roo, and Christopher Robin. (Click the name to access the .pdf to print.) Print out your favorite characters and arrange them on your tree skirt on a table. The idea for this is to make it kid friendly and fun. You can print these any size you like, if your printer allows.

For other themes, click on the names below for sites or their printables. Just follow the same directions to make a Christmas tree skirt to suit your family! Or, you can use your child's favorite coloring book pages! The possibilities are endless.

**Playhouse Disney including (very easy): Handy Manny, My Friends Tigger and Pooh, Charlie and Lola and The Imagination Movers.

**Star Wars (very advanced): Yoda, Millennium Falcon, Death Star, Darth Vader and R2D2 and C-3PO

**NFL (easy depending on the team): Pick your favorite team and print their logo!

Now that we have the printouts for our skirt, we need to do the following.

** You will need to cut out a 48" circle from the felt you purchased. Fold the circle in half, then in half again to find the center. Take your pencil and mark 2 to 2 ½ inch semi circle near the point. (The size of this cut will depend if you have a natural tree with a wider trunk, or a fake tree with a slim trunk.) Take your scissors and cut the semi-circle. Unfold your skirt until it is still half, and cut one of the folds to the new hole to make the slit. Unfold all the way and you have a tree skirt.

**Take your tree skirt and lay it out on your table. Take your printables and arrange them on the skirt. Now, take your page and use your pencil to trace along the black lines of the printout. Many of the above links have more in the pictures than just the main character, and for this activity, we only want the main character. Don't worry about the trees, or any of the background, just the main characters. If your print has lettering, then you will want to set your printer on 'mirror image' so it will print backward. This way, when you trace and then transfer to the felt, the letters will be readable!

Note: the darker you trace the black lines with your graphite pencil, the darker it will transfer. This project is best for reds, greens or white felt. This will not work well on darker colors like black or blue.

**Now that the lines have been traced on the pages, place the page on the pre-determined spot on your skirt. Be careful not to slide the page around or the lines will blur. Carefully press, with your hands, the page to the skirt. This will transfer the graphite to the felt. Again, the darker you traced the page, the easier it will transfer.

**Now that you have your characters on your felt, you need to color them! You can choose to use puffy paint (click here) or your acrylics. Most felt tree skirts aren't washed, so we will not be using fabric medium. If you plan on washing your skirt, or using a different fabric, then I recommend reading the label on the fabric medium before applying it to your acrylic paints.

I prefer to paint the characters with the acrylic paints, letting them dry, and then accenting them with the puffy paint. Use your imagination and get creative! Add glitter as snow, or ribbons around the edges as trim, or anything you like!

This is a very simple way to encourage the imagination of the kids and family to make a wonderful Christmas keepsake! You can make a new one every year as your kids grow. Enjoy!

Sources:

Personal Experience