Help.Kori: Felt Flower Wall Art Tutorial

I know, I know - it's been a long time since I've written anything. We have had a LOT going on around here which required me to step back a little from the blogging world. First off, I'm currently 30 weeks pregnant (tomorrow) with our baby GIRL! We found out in December which, coincidentally, is when I stopped blogging, probably due to the ridiculous amount of morning sickness I was dealing with. Nick was out of town for work (a LOT) which pretty much sucked me dry of any energy after taking care of the boys' and my own needs. In fact, I was going to post this last week and then we all ended up getting a stomach bug. I definitely want to keep everyone updated on what we're working on around here, but I warn you it might be slow going as I'm approaching my due date and my oldest is home from school for the summer. I'll definitely be sharing as many baby and nursery projects as I can, starting with this felt flower wall art tutorial!

Admit it, you're already starting to forgive me.

I saw this on Pinterest when I searched for "DIY wall art":

It actually linked back to some weird Yahoo link list so I couldn't even find a place to buy it, nor a tutorial to make one, which is how I ended up writing this post. I've since learned that you can find them at this Etsy store. She's got tons of really cute color combinations and she's got reasonable prices (and pillows!), but if you're looking to save some pennies like I am ( I'm envisioning a small art collection over the baby's crib) then you can make one yourself. The possibilities are only limited to what colors and fabric you can find. Ready? Let's go!

What you'll need:

• Canvas*

• Hot Glue Gun/Glue Sticks

• Scissors

• Fabric to wrap canvas (12"x12")**

• Felt

• Ruler or cutting mat

*For the canvas, you could easily go bigger (this is what I had on hand, the inspiration picture uses a 12x12 canvas) but if you go bigger you'll need to cut out bigger (or more) petals to fill out your flower.

**For a 10" square canvas, a 12" square piece of fabric should be sufficient, but canvases vary in thickness so keep this in mind. Whatever your canvas thickness, I recommend at least 2 extra inches on either side of your canvas to get it covered.

I had a 12 inch piece of fabric cut so I had to trim down the remaining sides since the fabric was 44/45 inches wide.

Starting with one side, glue it down, and do the same with the opposite side. Stretch a little until taut, keeping the stretch even along the canvas.

I cut out notches from the corners to eliminate bulkiness. DO NOT cut all the way to the edge of the canvas or you could run into an issue of the fabric not being able to cover the corners.

Once your canvas is wrapped, you're ready to start cutting out your rectangles for petals! (I explain why I don't cut them into petal shapes right away a bit farther down.)

Since felt is pretty stiff, I measured and cut one rectangle, then laid the piece on top of the felt and cut a strip of rectangles to streamline the process a bit.

I had 10 large petals (4 1/2"x 3"), 10 medium petals (3 3/4"x 2 1/2") and 14 small petals (3"x 2 1/4") - 10 small for the outer petals, 4 small for the inner bud)

Put a dot of glue in the center of one of the short sides and squeeze the sides together.

BE CAREFUL NOT TO BURN YOURSELF!

Flip the piece over, and place a fot of glue on either side of that fold, bringing the sides up and holding a few seconds until glue sets. AGAIN, BE CAREFUL NOT TO BURN YOURSELF.

Flip over and cut your rectangle into a petal shape. I did not cut the petal shape out at the beginning because I didn't want to cut off too much and end up with a petal that was too narrow. Once I had the two corner pieces cut off, I did the same thing when cutting out the rectangles and laid the corner pieces on top of the other rectangles (2-4 at a time) and cut the corners off, using the first petal I made in each size as a guide.

Start placing your petals on the canvas and then gluing them down when you like the way it looks. I only glued the bottom (where the fold is) of the petals down. I don't recommend gluing the pointed tops down in case you need to fluff them out later to your liking.

First layer down!

Do the same with the medium layer (gluing/placing) making sure to place each medium petal between two of the larger petals so the points alternate.

And then the same with the small layer (using only 7 petals - naturally, I forgot to take a picture of this step but you can use the picture below as reference.)

With 4 petals (only 3 pictured, I know, I know) only glue the center together, don't do the whole flip-and-glue step like we did with the other petals. We're going to use the larger base to fill in the center space a little bit. Glue those down just like we did the other petals. (again, bottom picture for reference, my apologies.)

With the last three petals, you're going to wrap them around each other a bit (kind of like a rosebud that's beginning to open.) I cut the outer petal a little smaller than the four I just glued on, the middle petal a little smaller than that, and the innermost petal even smaller. Once I had my little "bud" formed and glued together, I put a bunch of glue down in the center and smushed (which is a technical term) it in as much as I could.

Now fluff out your petals if needed and hang that puppy on the wall (after you run around the house showing it off and sending pics via text message to your mom, of course.) Don't forget to also show off your battle scars, because if you're anything like me, you probably burned yourself.

Doesn't your wall look prettier now? How did wall flowers get such a bad rap? ;)