Coffee Cup Felt Ornaments

A few weeks ago I helped a friend of mine set up a new Christmas tree she got for the apartment she recently moved into. I was excited to help, because decorating for Christmas is one of the best parts of the season. Without any decorations, it just doesn’t truly feel like the holidays. Being that my friend is a big coffee fan, especially when the seasonal drinks come out, I thought I would make her a few new ornaments for her tree inspired by the famous red coffee cups at Starbucks. It ended up turning out nicer than I thought it would and decided to make one more for my tree. It takes just a few items to put together and I think you could come up with many other designs using this same idea!

What You’ll Need:

• Scissors

• Paper and pen

• Red, green, and white felt (I had two sheets of red, and one each of green and white) 

• Button or gem

• A few pins

• Thread/embroidery floss and needle or glue (to attach all the pieces together)

• String

Directions:

1. To begin your ornament, you need to create a stencil. To do this, draw a vertical rectangular cup shape onto your paper (see photo). 

2. Above the cup shape, draw a thin horizontal rectangle, beginning the lid. To finish the lid, draw a smaller horizontal angled rectangle (see photo).

3. Cut out your cup stencil and lay it onto your red felt. Use a pen to trace around the stencil. You want two red pieces per ornament, that way the ornament will be a bit more thick and sturdy.

4. With your shape onto the red felt, cut it out of the felt. 

5. Now you have to cut out a few additional pieces to make the cup come together. First, you can take your stencil and cut off the top “lid” part from the cup. Then trace the lid onto the white felt and cut it out.

6. Using the white felt again, cut out a rectangle a little bit wider than the width of the cup. This will be the coffee sleeve.

7. With your four main pieces now cut out, lay them all together. On the bottom will be one of the red cup pieces, followed by the second red cup piece, with the lid and coffee sleeve on top. Add a few pins to keep it all in place.

8. Before you begin to sew, you want to cut a piece of string and lay it between the two red layers. You can tie a knot, or glue it for extra security. 

9. If you want to glue everything together at this stage, that works fine. If you want a little more style though, you can hand sew it all together. To do this, thread a needle with the color embroidery floss of your choice (I went with red) and tie a knot at the end.

10. Start your sewing by pulling your thread into one of the corners. I went in between the two red pieces to hide the knot.

11. Make your way around the ornament with small stitches until you make your way back to where you started and secure with a knot. The biggest part here will be to make sure you carefully secure the string at the top if you did not glue it in. You want to add extra security so it does not pull itself out when you hang it on the tree. You can thread through the string and around to trap it in place.

12. With your ornament sewn together, you can go back and stitch underneath the lid and around the coffee sleeve, but I left those without stitches.

13. Now it is time to add a little decor. I cut out an uneven star stencil and traced it onto some green felt. I then took the star and glued it in the middle of the coffee sleeve. 

14. In the middle of the star, I then sewed a sparkly button to add some shine and really bring it all together. You could add all sorts of items here though and try shapes other than a start to really personalize it. Once you finish your decorations, the ornament is finished!

Here are some photos of the final product: