Summer/Outdoor Living
Upgrading a Dollar Tree Summer Garland
I’m always looking for garlands for the fireplace mantel, so when I saw this floral garland at the Dollar Tree, I brought it home. It turned out to need a few tweaks before I was happy with it, but it didn’t take much to redo until I was happy with it.
Upgrading a Dollar Tree summer garland takes only a few small pieces of felt and a little bit of time.
I am an Amazon affiliate. If you click on one of the links below and make a purchase, I may make a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Items from this post that can be found on Amazon
Supplies Used:
- Dollar Tree flower garland
- 3 felt pieces in flower colours (on hand)
- 1 felt piece in green (on hand)
- hot glue
- cord or twine (on hand)
The original garland came attached to thin twine and what the heck is that purple thing they stuck in the middle of it? I knew right away that hairy looking thing had to go! Then, I wanted to add to the garland to make it look fuller.
I started by using my heat gun to loosen the glue on each piece, so I could remove them from the twine.
On the back of the flat flowers, the twine was held on by a small piece of felt. I loosened just enough of the glue to remove the twine, but left the felt tab so I could reuse it.
On the double-layered felt flowers, the twine was glued underneath one of the top petals. In this case, I simply trimmed the twine as close as I could on either side. I wasn’t going to be reusing the twine anyway.
After all the felt pieces were removed from the twine, this is what I was left with. You’ll see a yellow pom pom in the upper right-hand side of the picture. I decided that the two blue flowers needed a puffy centre too, so I glued one of these to the centres of each one, over top of the yellow circle that was already there.
I also added the same size pom pom in the appropriate colour, to the centres of the three new flowers I’d be making.
Next, I made a template of the flower, using a scrap piece of computer paper.
I used an ultra fine point Sharpie marker to trace this pattern onto the felt pieces. The marker did bleed through the fabric onto my craft mat, so you may want to place something underneath the fabric to protect your work surface.
I wanted to make three more flowers for the garland, so I traced two more flowers in yellow and blue.
In order to hold the flat flowers onto the garland, I cut out squares of felt for each of the three extra flowers and glued them onto the back of each one, leaving a flap at the top to attach the cord I would be using.
I also traced and cut out two more of these leaf shapes. I liked the way the originals folded over the twine to make it look like two leaves hanging together.
I had this cord in my stash, so I used it as the base of my garland. If you choose to use twine, I would recommend a thicker twine than the one that came with the original garland.
Then I attached each piece to the cord, alternating the flower colours and putting the leaves in between each flower.
I attached the cord to the double-layered flowers by gluing the twine under one of the petals on the front, in the same way that the original twine had been attached.
Here’s how the new garland looks on my fireplace.
I think it looks a lot more substantial than the original garland and I’m quite happy with the way it turned out.
Items from this post that can be found on Amazon
***
If you enjoyed this post, sign up for the Dollar Store Style newsletter. Every month you’ll get a new article, my pick for a Find of the Week, a Quick Tip for decorating, a Product Review and much more.
