Handmade Felt Succulent Gifts

Handmade felt succulents gifts make wonderful springtime gifts or decorations and are fun to make.

Teacher appreciation week was this past week at the kids’ school. I love this week because it gives me an excuse to use all my creative ideas and supplies. I decided to make these pots of felt succulents and with the teachers’ favorite candy hidden inside. I have to be honest, I don’t really like giving people candy, but the kids insisted. And really the gifts are from them, not from me. Kind of.

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I can’t claim the idea of the felt succulents in the vintage book as my own. I met the wonderful ladies from Spellbinders at a blog conference last year and absolutely fell in love with a display of a vintage book filled with felt succulents. I loved it so much that I took a poorly lit picture on my cell phone and went and bought the Platinum machine when I got home. I have to say that Spellbinders has been the best craft company I have worked with yet. They are fun and so creative and so willing to work with bloggers.  I just love them! And yes, these are the same succulent dies that I used to make the Metallic Succulent Wreath.

Anyhow, for the librarian and one of the Spanish teachers I went to the antique mall and found a vintage children’s nursery rhymes book and a vintage Spanish/English dictionary to fill with moss and felt succulents. Isn’t it pretty?

Supplies~

• Spellbinders Platinum or Platinum 6 machine
• Contour Sweet and Succulent Steel Rule Die
• Contour Simply Succulent Steel Rule Die
• 4 inch terracotta pot
• Craft moss
• DecoArt Champagne Paint
• Stipple brush
• hot glue gun with glue sticks
• variety of felt colors
• cloth covered floral stems
• floral tape

Start with painting on a little champagne colored paint using the stipple brush. I love the way the stipple brush leaves the dramatic brush strokes and adds just enough of the metallic color to make the pot shimmer in a rustic kind of way. Champagne is such a great neutral metallic because it’s not gold and it’s not silver. Kind of like greige; you can make it work with both beige and gray.

Once the paint dries it’s time to glue the moss around the edges of the terracotta pot. I quickly learned that a tiny bit of moss goes along way. And it gets everywhere, but it is way easier to clean up than glitter is!

Using the die cutting machine, the succulent dies and the felt, cut out enough shapes to make five succulents. Each die makes three shapes, small, medium and large. I use two of each to make each large succulent. You can make smaller succulents too, just using the medium and small cut outs.

Once you have your felt cut outs, grab the hot glue gun and start layering the succulent leaves. Stick a floral stem in between the layers and glue it it. I cut the stems to approximately 5 inches long. Once you have all the layers glued on, use a pencil eraser to push the glue down in the center while it is still hot. I like to hold it there for a few seconds while the glue dries and push the leaves up. If you skip this part the succulents will lay flat and be kind of boring.

Once all five succulents are formed, wrap the stems together with floral tape.

Fill the inside of the flower pot with candy, a gift card, dollar coins, mini bottles of lotion or whatever small gift you want. Then just stick the felt succulents in and arrange them so thy look pretty!

For the book, I used the same felt succulents and moss and just glued them in place to a piece of felt. I then cut the felt so that it is hidden and stuck it to the open book pages. Couldn’t be any easier!

Who will you give your felt succulent gifts to?

What is your favorite gift to give teachers?

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