Make a felt hot air balloon mobile

Hot air balloons are floating all around the internet lately. I'm not sure they'll ever reach owl status, but their popularity is certainly on the rise. Make a colorful hot air balloon mobile from felt using How Joyful's free pattern (via Craft Gossip). Or if paper is more your speed, try the gorgeous woven versions at PaperMatrix— they've added new designs #3 and #4, plus a basic video tutorial on how to assemble the balloons.

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DIY geometric felt bookmarks

Remember the boxes I made with stiffened felt from the craft store? I found it was easy to cut the stuff by hand with an X-acto knife, so I used the leftover scraps to make bookmarks with geometric cutouts. Kinda like the laser-cut items that are really popular right now, but without the laser.

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DIY stiffened felt boxes

I love the thick wool felt that's increasingly popular, but man. Wool felt in the 3mm to 5mm range is really expensive ($130/yard or so). The boxes, bowls, and vessels made with it are very cool, though. So when I was poking around my local craft store, I found a poor girl's substitute: Eazy Felt. You know it's cheap when "easy" is spelled with a Z instead of an S on the product label. It's regular craft felt that's been stiffened into sturdy sheets, and cost me $1.78 per 12"x18" sheet.

To make felt boxes, I cut a 9" square for the bottom piece, then added four slits and four diagonal cuts to trim away some of the excess felt on the tabs. See my pattern here. (This diagram is not to size; use it as a reference to see where to mark points on your felt.)

I used a rotary cutter and ruler to cut out the main shape, then made the slits and diagonal cuts with an X-acto knife. The stiffened felt cuts quite eazily. I didn't trace a pattern onto the felt; just measured with a ruler, marked the points, and sliced.

The box top is similar, except the center area is larger to fit over the box bottom, and the sides are half the height. See the template here.

After the pieces are cut, crease the tabs against the edge of a ruler to make assembly easier.

Fold the triangular tabs inward and bring the sides of the box up. (To allow for the thickness of the felt, you may need to trim an eighth inch off the edge of the triangle tabs so they don't poke out past the sides of the box.) Then secure the flaps with a hot glue gun. Do the same for the box lid. All done!

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Make a modular felt trivet

Related to yesterday's coaster project, here's a template for making a larger modular felt trivet. No sewing or gluing required. Connect as many pieces as you like to make bigger projects, too--placemats, a runner, or sew two pieces together for a pillow cover.


Download the pattern here. Then print out as many sheets as you need, pin them to a piece of felt, and use a rotary cutter or X-acto knife to cut the slits in each shape. (Press hard to make sure you cut through both the paper pattern and the felt.) Then cut apart the shapes, adding the notches around the edges.

Begin locking pieces together by pulling the arrow-shaped tabs through the slots from the back through to the front side. Connect as many pieces as you like.


To finish the trivet, trim off the excess felt around the edges and nip the points off the triangular tabs. Make a straight cut, or round them for a different look.

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Modular felt coaster tutorial

Modular pieces that fit together make me really happy, and on a recent Google hunt, I found felt rugs here and here made with interlocking shapes. Very cool. So I tried a pared-down pattern for coasters because I'm way too impatient to fit 847,236,780 pieces together to make a rug.

Download the PDF template right here (it makes two coasters.)

Print out the pattern and pin it to a piece of felt. Use an X-acto knife (press hard) or a rotary cutter to cut the diagonal slot in each pattern piece. Then cut apart the pieces, adding the cuts on the sides.

Grab four of the pieces and orient them as shown above. Each piece should be rotated 90 degrees from its neighbor, so that the ends with "arrows" are chasing each other around a square. Pull each arrow through the adjacent slot from the back to the front.

The coaster will look like this when you've locked all the pieces together.

Trim off the points of the arrows. Also trim off any edges that stick out so you end up with a neat square.

To make a larger trivet, see my next felt project.

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How to make strawberries from felt or paper

I have strawberries on the brain at the moment, and these felt versions are totally adorable. Get a tutorial for this chocolate-covered strawberry from Honey Girl Studio. (Look out! There's music, so hit mute if you don't want your boss to catch you skulking around the internet.)

This bowl of strawberries has downloadable instructions right here by Mr. Monkeysuit. Or get another free pattern here at Lit'l Brown Bird.

If you'd rather not stab your finger with a needle because you like paper cuts better, try folding origami strawberries like these from Flickr user N'omettre Rien.

Panda Snacks made an insane cake with them. You'll need some strawberry origami folding paper, available here at Etsy. This video shows how to fold them.

As I was preparing this post, a strange thing happened. I took a break to poke around YouTube, curious to see what the music artist Marina and the Diamonds looks like, since Are You Satisfied and I Am Not a Robot recently infiltrated my head. The first video I clicked was this. Are those felt strawberries attached to her shoulders?!

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DIY felt projects for the weekend

A list of cute felt tutorials from around the internet...
Felt-covered tape measure at Poppy Lane, above
Mini teacup pin cushion by Tasket Basket Crafts, above
Felt business card holders at Smila's World
Felt waffle cone by Hannah Hoosier
Felt floral wall mural by Mariana Leung at Design Sponge
Felt bows at Sew Gorgeous
Felt rosettes at Mrs. Priss

(Images from Poppy Lane and Tasket Basket Crafts )

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Felt ball ornaments

I tried making yesterday's project out of felt. Equally cute, I think. And more durable, too. To make them, follow these instructions, but use felt and a hot glue gun instead of paper.

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