PRETTY POINSETTIA
You will need
• A4 Seawhite MDF board, £3; Parsley fern pick, £5, Hobbycraft • Emulsion paint: we used Velvet Ribbon and Fortune Green, £2.03 for 30ml, Dulux • Paintbrush • Artist’s paintbrush • Royal Metallics paint in Gold, £2 for 50ml, Protek • A4 felt sheets, plain and glittered • Scissors • Rust-Oleum Elegant Metallic spray paint in Gold, £8 for 400ml, Dunelm • Glitter glue • Glue gun • Ribbon • Staple gun
1 Paint an A4 piece of MDF with two coats of purple paint. Once dry, lightly dip a dry paintbrush in teal paint and gently drag it horizontally across the surface of the sign to create a distressed effect. Once the paint has dried, use a fine artist’s paintbrush and gold paint to write ‘Merry Christmas’ on the centre of the sign. Use a stencil if you prefer.
2 Take a faux parsley fern pick and separate the individual fern leaves. Spray six of them on both sides with gold paint and leave to dry.
3 While the paint is drying, cut out the petals for your felt poinsettias. For each flower, you will need to cut five large petal shapes and five smaller petal shapes from coloured felt. Scale them up or down to create larger and smaller poinsettias for your sign. We made two large, four medium and two small poinsettias.
4 Once you’ve cut out all your petal shapes, outline the edges of each petal using glitter glue and allow them to dry thoroughly.
5 To assemble the poinsettias, cut a disk of felt 3cm in diameter to use as the base. Use a glue gun to attach the larger petals around the disk, slightly overlapping them as you go. Next attach the smaller petals on top of the larger ones in the same way, but slightly offsetting them so the points of the smaller petals fit between the gaps in the larger petals, as shown.
6 Take a sheet of green glitter felt and cut four large and four small holly leaves from it. Then cut eight 1cm diameter disks from the green glitter felt and glue one disk to the centre of each felt poinsettia. Take a sheet of gold glitter felt and cut two large and two small ivy leaves from it.
7 To assemble your sign, glue three gold fern leaves, all pointing outwards, to the top left corner of the sign. Repeat for the bottom right corner. Place one large, one medium and one small poinsettia on top of the fern leaves, on both the top and bottom corners, and glue into position. Next, glue a small poinsettia on the top right and bottom left corners. Tuck four holly leaves beneath the small poinsettias and stick into place. Finally, glue a large and a small ivy leaf beneath the two small poinsettias.
8 To finish, use a staple gun to attach two lengths of matching ribbon to the back of the sign and tie them into a neat bow at the top. Your sign is now ready to hang.