Felt Poinsettia Tutorial

It is no secret that I love to make accessories for my baby girl, so when I was pondering a special Christmas headband there seemed to me to be only one option: a felt poinsettia. Poinsettias scream “Christmas!!” to me. They are the iconic Christmas flower in my mind, and I knew that it would be fairly simple to put one together.

I made two felt poinsettias. The one for my baby girl is pretty large, but the one for the daughter of my BFF is rather huge. Remember the feathered hat I made her for Halloween? Yeah, her mom has problems. (Her words, not mine!) 😉 However, the beauty of this tutorial is that it could be easily adapted to make your poinsettia as large or as small as you would like! So if you want your little lady to look a little something like this Christmas Princess, then let’s get started!
For this craft you will need the following supplies:

* green and red felt
(I have been converted to wool felt. I didn’t realize the difference. Buy some on Etsy or at a specialty fabric store and you will notice a BIG difference. It is sturdier and doesn’t start to ball up or slowly stretch and pull apart. It is more expensive, but you need so little for projects like this that it is no big deal.)
* an alligator clip and/or elastic for a headband
* crystals or beads for the flower center
* a hot glue gun and glue
* thread and needle to attach your center beads* Fabric Mod Podge
* extra fine gold glitter
Start by deciding how large you would like your poinsettia. I knew I wanted mine large, so I found three things around the house that I could use to make three different sizes of circles. (The top and bottom of a goblet and the bottom of a water bottle. I’m very classy and professional.) Trace and cut your circles.
Either eyeball or plan with a pen a rough outline of your top flower. Cut.
Lay your top flower inside of the next size of circle. Either eyeball or make dots (as I did) to show where the points of the next flower will be so that they peek out from behind the first flower. Cut and repeat. I used three layers with my daughter’s flower.
At this point I took three Chinese Crystals from my jewelry stash and stitched through the three layers of felt and attached the crystals in the center. After tying it off I decided that, although I liked the look of my flower at this point, it didn’t seem to be quite full or even enough for my liking. So I grabbed the scraps and started cutting petals and hot gluing them to the back of the flower. It looks icky on the back, but you can’t tell from the front. Last but not least, cut and glue on the leaves.
At this point you can be finished constructing your flower if you would like! However, I have glitter problems, so I had to push on. I took a toothpick and dipped it into Fabric Mod Podge and put tiny dots around the crystals in the center of the flower.
Dump your extra fine gold glitter onto your flower and shake off the excess. I was a bit heavy handed with my Fabric Mod Podge, so I ended up using a new toothpick to scratch off a bit of the glitter.
Time to attach your flower to your alligator clip or headband. Sometimes I glue straight to a headband, but with things like this that are seasonal I like to get maximum usage out of them for years to come, so I have been putting them onto an alligator clip and clipping it onto elastic so that in years future we can put the clip straight into her hair. Assuming she ever gets any, that is. Glue the clip directly to the flower, and then glue a thin sliver of felt over the clip to secure, as shown in the picture.
If you would like some elastic sew it to the desired length. I got this gold elastic cord in the ribbon-sold-by-the-yard section at Joann’s Fabric and Craft Stores. I like it because I can literally tie it in a knot and leave it at that. If you are less lazy than I you can put a dot of super glue on the knot and cut the cord close to the knot once the glue is dry. (As you can see, I cut my cord too long and quickly tied it a bit shorter during our little photo shoot.)

Now go put that masterpiece of your model and enjoy! Happy Holidays!

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Sarah Westover McKenna

Sarah is the scattered creative mind behind Bombshell Bling. A former elementary school teacher and a current stay-at-home mom, she loves developing her creativity through her blog and her jewelry design business, Bombshell Bling Jewelry. Sarah is a lover of all things vintage, colorful, and BLING. She is also a sweets addict with a major obsession with s'mores.