Tara Gets Crafty (& Tutorial!)

Ok, so, I use Pinterest. And by that I mean that I pin a lot of ideas for crafts, recipes, and fashion, and do almost none of them in actual life. But not this day! This day I decided I would make this "no-sew" tree skirt that I found and really loved. I must admit I fully expected it to look horrendous afterwards. After all....

...But it worked!

I'm also going to present it to you in the form of A TUTORIAL!! That's right. If anyone reading this wants to make this awesome tree skirt, they need look no further. All instructions shall be included here. Are you excited? I know I am! Here we gooooo!

{Disclaimer: This project is super easy, but really tedious. Make sure you have a good chunk of hours to spend, or else be content with having to finish this in installments. I didn't realize it would take so long, and it was horrible to have to stop halfway through! But the end product was worth it :)}

First, here's the picture I saw on Pinterest -- the inspiration for it all! :

Isn't that nice? The lady who did this one used burlap from Walmart and some scrap fabric she already had at home. It's lovely!

Ok. Things you'll need:
- Fabric! I chose burlap and a kind of shiny red fabric because I love the contrast between the two. Ya know, sorta shabby chic meets refinement. Very classy. I got 2 yards of each and had some extra left over. {I've also seen some variations that use more than two colors of fabric. That would be awesome! I'd maybe get a yard of each if you do 3 or more colors/fabrics}
- Old, hideous tree skirt that you don't mind updating. Or just an okay tree skirt. OR a circle of felt or similar fabric that you cut into a tree skirt shape. I got an old tree skirt at a thrift store for a dollar.
- A hot glue gun
- A whole, humongous bunch of hot glue sticks. Like, possibly one of those big bags with like 40 in them will make it. No promises.

Step 1!
Cut your fabric into strips. The bigger the strips, the fewer rows you'll have on your tree skirt. I chose to do 3" strips, they just looked like a delightful size.

This is my cut up fabric. What can I say, I'm amazing. 

Step 2!
Heat up the glue gun and lay out the tree skirt! {I'd also suggest you pop in a movie to keep yourself entertained.}Start gluing on the strips starting on the outside edge of the skirt. I did a long stripe of glue on the tree skirt, then quickly laid my strip of fabric along it, ruffling the fabric as I went. Once I covered the glue stripe, I did individual dots of glue under the top part of each ruffly fold (where it would be hidden under the next layer), just to keep it laying sort of flat.

Tree skirt halfway finished! You may want to
have a snack handy, it can get pretty tedious. 

Step 3!
There's really no step 3. That's pretty much it. It's easy peasy!
You could thread some twine or leftover fabric through the part where the tree skirt is open to go around the tree, so you can tie it closed and keep it from moving as much. I didn't care, so mine was left un-tied. I wasn't very particular about how perfect my rows were either, and it came out a little uneven. But you can't tell under the tree, and I just made the last layer work with what I had left of the tree skirt. If you're more exact-minded, you can be somewhat precise about where you decide to glue your rows, and it will come out much more even than mine.

I love it!

I love my beautiful tree!

So, maybe this will be useful for someone. That'd be awesome! If not, you can just enjoy my tutorial and mentally praise me for my dedication and success in this craft. It really did come out way better than expected. Usually I botch these sorts of things impressively well.

Joe and I went with the Grierson fam to get our tree at a tree farm! Isn't it lovely? Post on that to come later...