Have you heard of a coffee cup cozy? It’s an adorable name for a glamorous coffee cup sleeve. Often used to protect your fingertips from the hot beverage take out cup.
Today I will show you how to make a felt coffee cozy for either cups from home or a take-out cup. As the weather gets chilly that means ice skating and winter sports (or standing still watching other people do winter sports tee hee…) that will have you warming up with a nice hot chocolate, tea or coffee. You need a coffee cozy to keep the hot inside and protect your hands. They look cute too!
You will need:
- felt (3 inch strip plus scraps for the applique)
- scissors
- measuring tape or ruler
- take away coffee cup
- needle and thread or sewing machine
Every cup is different so I recommend that you start by cutting a strip of fleece 3 inches wide and wrap it around your cup. Pin your felt in place to gauge the size you will need.
My favorite take away cup is a Grande Decaf Coffee from Starbucks (with cream and sugar and cinnamon and chocolate sprinkled on top…mmmm). That is also the size of the cups that they made into reusable plastic cups. Yeah! For my friends who live near Tim Horton’s, it fits their medium cups.
Read on to see details to make it this size.
Measure your felt and cut a piece 9 inches long and 3 inches wide. (23cms by 7.5cms) Fold the strip of felt in half.
Wrap the strip of fabric around the cup to see how it fits. Trim a small amount of felt on an angle to adjust for the shape of the cup.
Hand sew or machine sew the edge. Stitch close to the edge…approx. 1/4 inch (or 1/2cm). Fortunately, felt does stretch a bit so if it fits snuggly at first, it will soon be fitting comfortably.
Making the Flower Applique
Sorry there is no pattern made for this. I “eyeball” most of the time instead of using patterns. Sometimes that makes my project a bit crooked but I don’t want it to look like its a perfect cookie cutter project that you can buy at Walmart.
So every project is an original!
Cut 2 long strips with rounded corners. I used 3 shades of pink. The darkest is for behind the flower and cut into the shape of two leaves. The lightest pink is what I put for the middle of the flower. Cut 3/4 of an inch wide by 9 inches long. The centre pink was 1 1/4 inches by 8 inches. If you would like it to be fuller add another inch or two in the length to this piece.
If you are going to add beads to the edges – do it first. Using seed beads add a bead to each stitch as the needle is up on the right side of the felt. Its so easy, we should sew beads onto everything! I added beads to the centre piece and the outside layer but left the middle layer without beads.
To begin putting the flower together. Slide the needle through the felt with a loose baste stitch. Gently pull the thread at the end to begin gathering.
As the final step I put the flower together and sew them in pace. Then attached the entire flower to the sleeve.
Here is the back side. Now I attached the flower to the cup sleeve.
OR
You could put the flower together by sewing the layers directly onto the sleeve. Which ever makes more sense to you.
TA DA! Don’t you just want to show it off.
Felt is so easy to work with it will get your creative juices flowing! Now that you see how easy it is you will be designing more for a friend who loves dogs and another flower one for the babysitter, the mailman, workmates….spreading them all over the kitchen table like me making more….and more….
…or is it just me who does this?
This flower is simply just stacking circles. If you don’t want to sew you could glue it on.
This one is nice for the autumn. I did a few stitches on this seam of this one in green and put a button on as the centre.
The apple coffee cozy would be great for a teacher gift! If the kids did their own hand sewing I think the teacher would love the personal touch of a child’s efforts to stitch it. Ask your kiddos if their teacher likes coffee and put a gift card with it. I read an article about giving teacher gifts and it is the hand written cards of thanks from the child that really touch their hearts.
What about a sweet little bird. I had put some birds just like these on the knees of my daughters pants-to cover a hole. I’ll put the link below.
I hope you get a chance to make a coffee cozy! With felt costing around a dollar a piece you could make 3 from one piece and then personalize it with your scrap pieces. Now that is an inexpensive gift!
Felt is so easy to work with. Get your kids learning some hand sewing skills and give gifts they feel proud to give!
Here are a few more projects that we have tried to make with FELT!
Sew a Super Easy to Make Felt Crown – Add to your dress up clothes!
Make a Fleece Tied Blanket – Easy No Sewing
The No Sew Fleece Blanket
My daughter loves dogs so when I saw this fleece at Joann Fabrics-I grabbed it. It’s so cute wish I had gotten more to make a dog pillow or bed.
I prefer my fleece blankets to have a pattern on one side of the blanket and a co-ordinating color on the back. I chose a bright red to be the second color to match this awesome dog fabric.
To make this project you will need:
- fleece fabric in 2 co-ordinating colors. I had mine cut to 55 inches long
- scissors or rotary cutter and mat
- ruler or tape measure
Fleece fabric often has one side with writing and the other side will be curled. Start by trimming off these rough edges.
Lay the fabric on the floor-you need a huge workspace. Stack the two layers of fabric on top of each other and make sure it is a perfect match. If one piece is slightly longer, trim it.
When it’s as close to perfect as you can get it, trim off 4 inch squares off of each corner.
Without moving the fabric, cut the edge of the fleece into strips 1/2 wide, 3 inches long. Cut each strip through both layers of fabric.
Take the fabric strip from the top layer and the bottom layer and tie them together to make knots. Do this on every single strip. Make sure you match the top to the bottom to catch every single ribbon.
This is a slow process so turn on a movie if you get bored.
Cutting and knotting is a long and slow process but that is literally all there is to it. It’s so crazy easy to make, the kids could do it.
This girl loves her furry siblings so much! Look at these pooches, the feelings are definitely mutual!
Gemma is always up for a photo shoot for momma’s blog posts.
Now you have a cozy blanket to take in the car, campfire, couch, bed, deck chair or beach….you should have a few of these as the weather gets chilly.
Thanks for visiting my website! I’d love it if you would Pin this on Pinterest or share it with your Facebook friends or other social media.
See you again soon!
More cozy fleece projects below!
Easy to Make Fleece Hat with Flowers – Simple Sewing Project
Sew a Super Easy Fleece Poncho-Simple Starter Sewing Project
Make a Pencil Jar for Autumn
You will need:
- a short mason jar (or a jam or pickle jar from your recycle bin)
- clear glue
- leaf confetti (if you have a leaf punch make your own)
Glue!
Using clear glue is important. Originally, I used white craft glue and it dried very white and milky looking. So that was a craft fail. Meh!
Fortunately, I could pull off the leaves and wash off the old glue and start again.
Glue and stick. Glue and stick. Repeat…repeat…repeat.
My 11 year old worked with me on this. She loves candles so she wanted to make this a candle holder.
Easy gift idea for the kids to make, right?!
She was right it did look great with a candle light. Unfortunately, we are still in “keep the kids from setting the house on fire” protective parent mode – so we only use candles on very special occasions. So in the meantime, this gorgeous jar is going to be a pencil holder.
Thanks for checking out this post. I hope you enjoy Autumn before its gone.
Below are a few more kids crafts I’ve done over the past few weeks.
Post them on Pinterest or share them on your social media.
See you again soon!
Add Glitter and Sparkle to a Drab Pillow
Have you ever seen a black and white print on a pillow or t-shirt and thought…this is a bit dull…how can I jazz this up? Maybe a bit of glitter paint is needed.
A while ago, I purchased a lot of pillows from Ebay for super cheap…Like $4 each. The price was ridiculous…and so was the quantity I bought! Now I had lots and lots of gifts to give to cat and dog lovers. and housewarming presents.
I really like these two pillows but…. Boring…zzzzz
I love this black and white cat but after a while I thought it was a bit flat. So out came a paint brush and the sparkle paint.
I tested the glitter paint I had on hand before I put it on the pillow. I don’t like having a trail of glitter after a craft. So I tested the Martha Stewart Multi-surface Glitter paint.
Now that makes it pop!
Here is another one…
I must confess, I will buy just about anything that says “I love you to the moon and back”. It’s something my youngest and I have said for years especially when I tuck her in at night. This pillow is sweet but also a bit plain Jane.
At the moment I only have gold, red and blue sparkle paint. So I used all three.
Wowie zowie this turned out great too!
Thanks for checking out this post. I hope you can find something to add some sparkle to also.
Remember to Pin this to Pinterest or share it with your favorite social media!
Easy to Make Fleece Hat with Flowers – Simple Sewing Project
This fleece hat project is so easy and fast! You’ll have a new winter hat done in 20 minutes. Then I will show you how to make a simple flower applique. The weather is getting chilly now so this is just the thing to make for yourself or a gift for someone else.
You will need:
- a small amount of polar fleece fabric (10 x 26 inches )
- scraps of fleece from other projects in co-ordinating colors (1-2 inch wide x 12 inches long)
- sewing machine
- scissors
- needle and thread
This hat is made up of 6 long triangle panels.
Cut 6 identical pieces from the template below out of fleece.
Right click on the photo above and save to your computer. This should print out to the right size on regular 8.5 x 11 computer paper.
Sew the first 2 pieces together (with right sides together).
Pin the third section of the hat in place next to the first two pieces and sew it. After the three pieces are sewn together set this aside.
Repeat these steps with the other 3 sections.
With the right sides together, pin these two halves together. Sew all the way around the top.
Turn the hat inside out and try it on. Determine how wide the hem should be. If the hat seems too long for you, simply cut 1/2 an inch off the hem and try it on again. Fold the bottom inwards to hem and pin in place.
On this hat we folded the bottom over 1/2 inch and did a zig zag stitch all the way around. When your fold is wide, your zig zag hem lays flat. As the photo above shows.
On these three photos of my daughter wearing different hats – the hem was shorter so the zig zag stitch was closer to the edge and it did look quite wavy. I like both ways.
The Flower Applique
We cut a strip of fleece 1 and 1/2 inches wide by 12 inches long. Then carefully cut a rounded pattern to make the flower petals.
Thread a needle with a knotted length of thread and begin to do a loose baste stitch across the bottom of the petal strip of fleece.
Gently pull the thread to gather the pleats. Set this part of the flower aside for now.
Cut another length of fabric 1 inch by 12 inches long. This will be an inner layer of petals so its a bit shorter than the first. Baste this as we did with the previous flower petal section. Pull the thread to gather the fabric and set this aside too.
For the centre of the flower cut a circle 2 inches in diameter. I traced the vitamin bottle to make the circle. Baste around the circle and pull the thread to gather the edges. When it’s pull closed put a few stitches to keep it tight.
Adding the Flower Applique to the Hat
Attach the pink petals to the hat with a few stitches. As you sew this on you can adjust the petals to the desired size of the flower. Next add the inner layer of flower petals into place and stitch that into place. Lastly, sew in the centre piece, with the gathered part facing the hat. Secure this and your hat is done!
I hope you get a chance to try this easy sewing project. I’m working on making pattern sizes for children and babies. I hope to add these to the post too.
Pin or share this with your favorite social media!
Sew a Super Easy Fleece Poncho-Simple Starter Sewing Project
Make Leaf Art – Easy Nature Project!
The Autumn season is here and the leaves are changing color and falling. This is a great time for a nature walk to collect and examine and reflect on the beauty of this season. Leaf Art!
Start with some friends…any age will love this. Take a large clear bag and start to collect samples of nature.
What to look for:
- a variety of leaves
- pine cones
- pine needles
- acorns
- stones
- twigs
- a handful of grass
- small flowers
If your friends are little you might just want to use a piece of cardboard and glue your collection to the board. Puncture 2 holes near the top and add a string to hang it on the wall.
For Older Kids!
I think the older kids could do better. If you are over 5 you can make some really cool art from your nature walk.
Pressing the leaves in books: If the kiddies or you need a nap after the big nature hike-don’t feel bad its the fresh cool autumn air! If you want to work on the crafting stage on a different day….You could put the leaves between book pages for a couple of days to make them flat and a bit dryer. If you just leave them out til tomorrow they will begin to dry up and curl.
We decided to make our crafts immediately before they shrivelled. I took pictures of each leaf masterpiece to print out an autumn nature photo album later.
We took some great photos of vibrant orange and red leaves as the sun hit them.
I love this time of year! Now let’s make some leaf art!
Making Trees!
Put a few twigs as a trunk. Then add leaves to form a tree. You can glue the leaves or use double sided tape.
A collage of twigs and leaves make an easy tree picture. Change your leaves and your tree will look completely different.
The grass can be trimmed with scissors.
Making People!
Draw a head on a page and then start making a self portrait. Huge googly eyes and flower earrings make this face stand out from the crowd.
Oh my days! It’s like looking in the mirror!
This one is for my 11 year older daughter who has lovely blonde hair and likes to have some sparkling earrings.
This one is for the youngest daughter. This is a picture of her and our little dog Gemma.
Making Animals!
This is Gemma our little dog. Made by my younger daughter. I love the dog’s little round ears. That is made out of clover leaves. Notice that we used a sharpie (permanent marker) to make the mouth and nose. I also used scissors to make a the little legs.
Our 11 year old made up this bit of art. It’s Gus our other dog. He looks like a surprised sheep! LOL!
I think I thought this looked like a mouse but now he looks like a koala bear. Its the nose.
Turn the ears and it looks like a rabbit.
That is the highlights of today’s Leaf Art-Now to clear up the kitchen counter from these bits of nature so we can make lunch.
I hope you enjoyed this post. I had a great time making it.
If you are feeling stressed, get outside for a walk in nature and then craft with the leaves and twigs and grass you find. It’s my cure to melt away stress and have a blast with my family.
Have fun and see what you can make!
Here are some other NATURE craft projects!
Nature Craft – Perfect for Earth Day Activity – Clay Imprints with Plants and Flowers
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Heart Shaped Beach Stones – Pebble Art
Make heart shaped pebble art with a collection of beach stones and natural rope on wood.
We have gone to the beach twice in October. The cool thing about going to the beach in the Fall is that no one else is there. The beach-that is typically packed with families with picnics and sunscreen….well….is empty. Have you ever had an entire beach to yourself? It’s amazing!
Our home is about an hour’s drive away from Lake Huron. If you aren’t familiar with the Great Lakes allow me to explain….
The Great Lakes
The Great Lakes aren’t your typical lakes. There are 5 and they are huge! Each looks like a sea, with rolling waves, winds, strong currents, great depths and distant horizons. According to Wikipedia if you put all 5 of the Great Lakes together the surface would be the size of the United Kingdom. Lake Huron is where we would head to see a gorgeous sunset.
If we drive an hour in the opposite direction from home, we will be at Lake Erie. If you are a morning person you can watch a beautiful sunrise on that side. Yawn…..
The Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth. 4 out of 5 are on US Canadian Borders (Superior, Ontario, Huron and Erie). Leaving Lake Michigan the only one that is located completely in the US. According to Wikipedia “they form a single, naturally interconnected body of fresh water”.
Well that is enough of our fun facts for today! Moving back to our craft project and a trip to the beach.
With my eyes on the ground looking for awesome rock treasures I always marvel at how beautiful the stones are wet, sparkling in the sunshine. As we walked along looking for interesting shapes-especially hearts! What did we find but this heart made out of drift wood. Awe isn’t it Lovely!
If you look at the beach for odd shaped stones, you suddenly see how very many there are in the shape of a heart.
We came home with a nice collection of smooth stones that I sorted into a few containers for different crafts I have planned.
Circles, Oval, Hearts, Big Flat ones and some that were just wonky shapes.
If you are just buying a bag of stones from the dollar or craft store you probably won’t find heart shaped ones, but you can make a heart shape with any natural pebbles and it still looks great.
A month ago, I was spray painting things and I threw in some stones and painted them. If you have already my previous projects from the summer you will soon see that I love to spray paint things! My daughter noticed that I had painted a random stone orange but it was a really cool heart shape. This started my fixation on heart shaped stones.
On our next trip to the beach we specifically made a search for hearts, circles and long oval pebbles of any size. Bring on the rock projects!
To make this you will need:
- heart shaped stones (if you can’t find them smooth pebbles are fine)
- wooden board (I had already stained this 9 x 16 board with Miniwax Jacobean)
- jute natural rope
- hot glue gun
- 6 glue stick refills
- 2 eye hooks
To get started, I organized my love heart shaped rocks to see how big it would be on my wooden board. I didn’t glue it to on yet. Instead, I took a photo of it on my phone in case I needed to refer to it. Then I got my jute natural rope.
To decide on your letter size use your fingers to make the shape of the L. I usually “eyeball” my projects instead of measuring. Holding the rope down I wrote out the letters of the word Love on the wood.
I cut the rope ahead of time because it was quite big to work with. You might choose to leave it on the spool until the end. That’s cool too!
Using a hot glue gun put a few dabs at the top of the loop of your letter L and guide it into the shape of the letter using dabs of glue as you go along. Move on to the letter O and then join into a V and finally an E.
After the E is glued down trim the rope. Make sure the end of the E is secured so that the rope doesn’t fray and lift up.
Perfect! Next lay out the rocks in the heart shape again.
When you have the stones just where you want them. Remove each one and put a dab of hot glue on each pebble and then put in back in its place.
This craft would look good without the rope if just the stones on the wood appeals to you.
I picked up this package of screw eyes at a craft store but you can find them at the hardware store and dollar stores too. I chose the humble eye hooks so that I could have the rope on the top of the project match the “Love” at the bottom.
Simply screw these into the top of the board and tie jute rope in a knot. Now it can hang on the wall.
This is a super easy gift idea. You could really personalize it by writing your last name instead of love, or something else…maybe “faith”, “hope”, “smile”, “dream”….something that will inspire or make you smile. You could also make this any size or paint the wood board instead of staining it. Get creative!
Thanks for reading this post and checking out another one of my crafts. I have posted several rustic/wood home décor projects recently, so I’m linking them to this message for you to pop over and see too.
Please pin or share with your social network of friends.
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Make an Easy Bandana Pillow
So a month or two ago I purchased way too many bandanas. Since then I’ve been looking for ideas to use some of them in projects. Today I’ll show you how to use 2 more! Let’s make a pillow for the bed, couch, or dog.
This is the beautiful Gemma. She is our 2 year old Yorkiepoo (Yorkshire Terrier mixed with Poodle). She loves to share my chair when I’m using the computer. Gemma stays up as late as I do and then sleeps in behind the bend in my legs. She is quite yappy to the squirrels but she is a dream dog at home. One of her favorite places to nap is in her crate. So let’s make her a new pillow.
You will need:
- 2 bandanas/handkerchiefs the same color or complimentary colors
- sewing machine
- needle and thread
- pins
- pillow or stuffing
With right sides together, match up the corners and pin them. They don’t make handkerchief/bandanas all the exact same size. So don’t get frustrated. When you sew them together you will be able to correct their wonky sides.
See what I mean. The purple one is not cut straight or is slightly bigger, so it’s sticking out. Sewing them together with a straight line will disguise the mismatch.
Sew almost all the way around leaving a wide gap on one side.
Turn the pillow case inside out and insert the pillow. Since this will be used for Gemma’s crate I didn’t buy a new pillow form. Instead, I used a cheap, old limp bedroom pillow that was wasn’t very fluffy anymore. It easily fit into this pillow case.
Next, take your needle and thread and hand sew this opening closed.
You could use this on the couch, on a bed, outdoor furniture, in the car or……
…..for your sweet puppy dog.
Thanks to Gemma for being a gorgeous model for this little photo shoot.
Feel free to comment with suggestions for what to do with the other 15 bandanas I still have left over. Did you see the Fall table cloth I made last month? Have a look.
Fall Leaf Rubbing – Super Easy Kids Craft!
Remember doing Leaf Rubbings in the Fall when you were a kid? Well, Autumn is here again and its time for a nature walk to collect some leaves for this wonderful classic nature craft.
On your nature walk give the children (even young toddlers) a paper bag or large zip lock to collect their treasures.
Just in case they should ask the question…. Why do the leaves change color and fall off the trees?
Here is a quick answer….The leaves collect sunlight to feed the tree in the spring and summer. During the fall the tree goes into resting mode for the Winter. So the leaves turning color is the their way of getting ready for Winter.
There is much more to learn about it but that is the toddler explanation. If the kids are older why not do a research project to learn more. It’s quite interesting. For example, an oak tree’s leaves turn brown for a different reason then a maple tree’s leaves turning red. Chlorophyll and photosynthesis, glucose, oxygen and carbon dioxide-there is a whole factory in every tree we haven’t even noticed. Have a read through this website for a little lesson my 8 year old could handle..
https://www.sciencemadesimple.com/leaves.html
For this project you will need:
- Crayons…green, brown, orange, red, yellow
- Leaves
- Plain paper
Grab your crayons and paper and leaves. Peel the paper off your green, brown, orange and red crayons.
We have a nice collection of treasures from our nature hike-including stones, sticks and petals from my mums. For today’s project we just used the larger leaves. I’m setting the rest of the little treasures aside for another project.
Take your leaf and turn it face down. Lay a blank page on top of the leaf. Turn your crayon on its side and rub on the leaf.
Yellow was one of my favorite colors to do rubbing but it doesn’t show up quite as well on photos.
On this one we tried to layer red after the yellow but the leaf had moved a bit. It still looks cool though.
Were you able to collect a variety of leaves? If the weather didn’t work out for a proper nature hike in the woods, look around your yard and take a leaf sample of nearby shrubs and garden plants. They definitely have interesting leaves worth doing a leaf rubbing with too.
Here we tried all the crayon colors on each leaf.
For this lovely art piece, we used only one colour on the leaf and then moved the leaf over and tried the next colour.
This is such a quick and easy autumn activity-it could be part of a yearly autumn tradition. If you have little ones in your life, I hope you can find a few moments to enjoy the Autumn changes of season and make some Fall art together.
Check out this post for a great nature craft using inexpensive clay!
Nature Craft – Perfect for Earth Day Activity – Clay Imprints with Plants and Flowers
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Rustic BirdHouse – Twigs and Moss
I’m loving sticks and twigs and rocks this year! So you’ll see a lot of these projects from this past summer and heading into the fall and winter. This is birdhouse project, I really enjoyed making and can’t wait to tell you about!
Two years ago my daughter and I painted a bunch of birdhouses and drilled them to the garage. It’s an old wooden garage with peeling paint so if we can distract your eyes from its sad, old, tired look we would! It should get knocked down and rebuilt but we would like it to last a few more years…so instead I’m decorating it.
See what I mean…
I apologize we got a bit sidetracked there. Back to the twig birdhouse. After two winters the birdhouse collection had gotten worn out and weathered. They were just cheap wooden ones from the dollar store and we didn’t think ahead to put extra clear coats over the craft paint to make them water resistant. That would have been sensible.
If you would like to try this you will need:
- a birdhouse
- outdoor paint or varnish to water proof it
- branches
- garden snips
- E6000 or other industrial glue
- natural moss
You can get inexpensive birdhouses at the dollar store but if you would like it last for years and years get the sturdy ones from the hardware store or make your own. Paint it or put a protective clear varnish so it will last a long, long time. I opted to use the old weather worn ones to try and upcycle it instead of throwing it out.
We needed to trim some out of control shrubs and some branches so this project was perfect timing. There was no measuring of the length just line up the twig to the area you want to put it and snip! When I had the area planned out I went back to glue it.
Using E6000 Industrial glue is stinky so I try to use it only outdoors. It is slow to dry but very secure. I have used a hot glue gun to secure sticks and pebbles to things like this before and within a few days it had pieces falling off. If your project is going to be indoors you could get away with quick drying hot glue.
I attached the sticks all over one side of the birdhouse and left it to dry.
Each side needed several hours to dry. Then I came back to work on the next side. This really slowed down the process. It felt very relaxing making this natural project so I didn’t mind that it took me a few days.
I was actually quite happy with it with just the sticks on the birdhouse. I took this picture a few weeks ago with my bandana table cloth post. It’s cute right!
But then….I had a vision of it with moss and the project took on its final stage….
The moss is from the craft or dollar store and comes by the bag. It is quite loose and flakey so it will make a bit of a mess on your work space.
Anywhere I could see the old purple paint I put in some moss. This photo shows me sliding the moss in between each stick using a butter knife as a tool. I also used some dabs of glue plus jamming it in gaps between the twigs.
Heavy rains and wind may be hard on the moss. We will see how it lasts and maybe place it in a bit of a protected area of the garden. A covered porch would likely be ideal.
Isn’t that beautiful! I don’t know that any birds will actually want to use it but for a decorative addition to the garden I’m very pleased with it!
Thank you for reading to the end. I hope you enjoy your day. Before you go feel free to visit some of my other posts. Pin this to Pinterest or share it on your favorite social media.
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