Hand Decorated Christmas Stocking

Today's post is something a little different from me. I've been getting a bit crafty recently and decided to make my husband his own stocking this year. That was the intention anyway, but when I saw Hobbycraft has plain red stockings for just two pounds, I decided it was probably safer that I bought a ready made one and just decorated myself! I think this is a great idea if you're struggling to think of things to do with the kids whilst they are off school in the run up to Christmas - or you could even make your own.

In total it cost me just £5 to decorate this stocking, with everything coming from Hobbycraft, which I think is really good considering how much some shops charge for theirs, and this adds more of a personal touch. The stocking itself was £2, the felt was 50p per sheet (I bought a few but only used one green and one white in the end, something to bear in mind before going mad and buying a load!), and the faux fur was £1. I wanted to get some tartan material, which they did not have, but I found this tartan fabric bottle bag near the till for just £1, so I decided to pick that up and cut it up how I wanted.

First off I printed a letter A (my husbands initial) template, cut it out and pinned it to the tartan fabric. Using the template as a guide, I cut the letter A out of the fabric.

Once cut out, I then pinned the tartan fabric to the green felt and cut around the A, leaving roughly a 0.5cm border around it.

I then stuck the A down onto the stocking. Rather than faff around stitching everything on, I used fabric glue to fix everything on to the stocking, It's held everything in place and doesn't take very long to dry, providing you only use a thin layer (it does whiff a bit though!).

Next I stuck a strip of the white felt to the top of the stocking. The width of the felt wasn't quite enough to cover all of the fold-up top to the stocking, but this was ok for me as I knew I wanted to have the faux fur running along the top.

So, as you probably guessed, I then stuck the faux fur across the top. The reel that I bought was enough for two layers all the way around the stocking.

Then, I printed out a snowflake template and pinned it to the leftover white felt and cut out as many as I could (I managed four in the end). This was quite a fiddly job, so if you didn't fancy doing this part, there were loads of lovely embellishments in Hobbycraft that you could buy and stick on instead.

Once I'd cut out all of my snowflakes, I decided where I was going to position them on the stocking, and then stuck them down with the fabric glue. Et voila! Here is my finished stocking, It's not the best of quality in the world but I'm pretty pleased with it and I'm sure my husband will appreciate the effort.

Have you been doing any Christmas crafts this month?