If you’re looking for a fun easy way to make DIY personalized stockings, you’ve come to the right place! This tutorial is super adaptable, so you can really express your personal style. You can use any font or design you want to personalize your stockings, that way you can know exactly who each Christmas stocking belongs to. I absolutely love the results, and can’t get enough of our super cute stockings!

This tutorial uses a Cricut explore air machine to cut iron on vinyl letters. Once you get familiar with the Cricut, you’ll find that it is super easy to use. And it makes such awesome results!

I love decorations that you DIY. They are so much more personal and can really express your style. This year, I decided to go all out for Christmas crafts. So I made these adorable personalized stockings for my family, and I made some really fun pom pom garlands for the tree. I also made a festive shirt that I haven’t posted about yet, but I’ll link to it once I have.

Cricut projects are especially fun because you can make so much with it. I could never have cut out cute iron on vinyl letters myself. Sure, I’m crafty, but I’m not quite that precise. Even better, the iron on vinyl is washable!

Well, if you’re ready to learn how to make these DIY personalized stockings, keep scrolling!

Supplies:

• Stockings
• Cricut Explore Air
• Iron on Vinyl
• Iron

Step One: Design stockings

The first thing you want to do choose how you want to customize your stockings. I’m lucky that my family has different initials, so I used just the first initial for each person. I used Cricut design space to make and resize the letters. Instead of making them all the same font size or same height, I adjusted them until they were as big as I thought looked good together. I used the font Georgia.

I set each of the letters to cut. Don’t forget to measure your stockings so that you don’t make the letters too big or too small.

Iron on vinyl needs to be cut as a mirror image. If you cut it normally, you’ll get backwards letters on your stockings. . Simply select “mirror” before you go to cut, as you can see in the image below. On the preview screen the selection is right below material size.

Step Two: Cut Vinyl on Cricut

Next you want to put your vinyl on your cutting mat. I used a regular strength mat. With iron on vinyl, you want to load it on the mat with the front facing down. With glittery vinyl this is easy to tell, because the front is much shinier and the back is somewhat dull. So you want the dull side up.

You only need to put vinyl on the areas that will actually cut. So for this project, I cut a piece of vinyl to approximately 3″x10″. You can tell what size you need on the preview screen.

Once your vinyl is ready on the mat, Load your mat into the cricut. Then make sure your cricut is set to “iron on vinyl” then press go! Let the cricut do its thing and cut the vinyl letters.

Step three: Weed vinyl

The next step is to weed the vinyl, which means removing any excess vinyl that isn’t part of the final design. You can usually just start pulling up a corner, and the cut parts will stay attached to the clear layer that makes up the front of the vinyl. I love the cricut weeder tool and use it all the time to help weeding out small areas, like the inside of the e.

Then, once the vinyl is all weeded and only your final design remains, you can cut the letters apart from each other to get them ready to go. You want each section of the design that is going on its own stocking to be separate.

Step Four: Iron

Next you’ll want to iron your vinyl onto the stockings. First, place the letter where you want it to go, with the plastic layer on top. The letter should be facing forward and placed where you want it in the final design.

I cut a piece of a file folder to use inside my stocking to make it slightly stiffer so that ironing was easier. This is optional based on what kind of stocking you use.

You will want to set the iron to a setting for cotton, and then start ironing on top of the plastic over the letter. I ironed each letter for about one minute total, but it would probably have been fine with less.

Once the letter is fully adhered, peel back the plastic layer. If any part of the letter starts to come up, just let the plastic fall back down and iron until the letter is fully adhered. Once the plastic is off, you’re done! You’ve got your awesome DIY personalized stockings.

Step Five: Display!

Now all you have to do is hang your stockings and fill them with presents!

I’m so happy with how our DIY personalized stockings turned out. I think they’re super cute. Some of my family thinks capital letters would have looked better, but I just have a thing for lowercase. I almost always like the look of lowercase letters better.

I love having stockings in non-traditional colors as well. It’s easy to find red and green stockings but other colors are more difficult to come by.

Seriously, how cute do they look on the mantle? I just love them. If you can’t already tell, because I only took about 1 zillion pictures that I couldn’t help but share. I hope you enjoy looking at them!

And if you really can’t get enough, check out my Christmas living room tour.

Let me know how making your own DIY personalized stockings goes for you! I would love to see some pictures.

supplies used in this post

The post DIY Personalized Christmas Stockings appeared first on Pins and Procrastination.

This year I finally feel like our Christmas decorations look great and express my taste. So I just had to show them off to you!

Even though I’m Jewish, my husband is Christian. I have always LOVED Christmas lights and decorations, so after we got married I started going all out with Christmas decor. Honestly, my husband is just my excuse to decorate, because he wouldn’t even notice if we didn’t have Christmas decorations at all. I really do it because I just love the spirit of Christmas.

Snow, hot chocolate, twinkling lights…. I love it all. I love how happy most people are around the holiday season, despite the crazy competitiveness people get over parking spots. I love how people are grateful for the things they have during the holidays. I love the spirit of giving and picking out gifts for the people I care about. And I love how charitable people are around Christmas. I just had to express all that spirit here!

So here’s a little glimpse of the decorations we have for the holidays! If you want to find some of the decorations we used, sources are at the bottom of the post.

Most of our Christmas decor is around the tree and the fireplace. I sit on our couch all the time facing the tree and fireplace, and the view just makes me so happy!

One of the things I love most about Christmas is holiday cards! Lars can attest that every time we check the mail in December, all I look for are holiday cards and I’m practically giddy about getting them. I love to display them in our living room.

This year I got this adorable Christmas card display from Crate and Barrel. It’s already full (we’ve gotten even more cards since I took these pictures) so I think I need to get another!

If you look closely in the pictures, you can see our family holiday picture hanging up behind them. It’s the picture we used on our holiday card this year.

I mean, seriously, look at all those cute faces! We have the most adorable friends and family. Shoutout to the people who send cards the earliest because you get to be displayed forever on the blog :)

Most of my first Christmas decorations were gifts from others. My mother in law gave us these adorable moose stocking holders. My husband and his family grew up using these holders in Alaska, and I love how they’re such a big part of family tradition.

The little hedgehog holder is from target, we just couldn’t resist.

I also love this cute chalkboard that says happy holidays. We got the chalkboard for a baby shower I cohosted in August, but I’ve kept using it around the house for decor. It fits perfectly here for Christmas!

On our coffee table I set out these antler bowls full of ornaments. My mom got me the bowls several years ago, and I’ve always used them to hold cute ornaments.

Plus how cute is that little wood penguin? I love him! Even though my dog does knock him over regularly with his crazy happy tail.

I have a hard time finding holiday pillows I love, so we just went with these buffalo check covers this year. I’m always on the lookout for more festive pillow covers that are also soft and the right size!

But the best part of our living room at Christmas is when the tree lights up (every day at 4:30). Those lights always make me smile.

And if you are wondering where I got our garlands, I made them! You can read how to make your own pom pom garland here.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little glimpse into our holiday living room! I certainly love these pictures.

I hope you and your family have an absolutely wonderful holiday season, whatever you celebrate!

Fa la la la la la la…..

Sources:

Tree: craigslist, similar on amazon • Garlands: DIY project • Topper: Crate and Barrel • Stockings: Amazon and amazon • Pillows: amazon • Card Holder: Crate and Barrel (no longer available) • Stocking holders: Target (no longer available) • Tree Skirt: Target • Silver Ornaments: Target

Some of our Christmas Decor

The post Christmas Living Room Tour appeared first on Pins and Procrastination.

If you’re looking for a fun, easy, and adorable Christmas craft, look no further. This pom pom garland is so easy to make, and it looks great on the tree. It is the perfect festive Christmas craft. It makes my tree look so happy and unique! And it really couldn’t be any easier to make. So much cuteness from so little effort!

I wanted my Christmas tree this year to be green and white. Last year I did more traditional with a red ribbon, but it wasn’t really my style. I wanted to do a garland this year that would be a little less traditional and a lot more fun! So I figured a pom pom garland would be the perfect way to do that. And I love it!

It does take a lot of pom poms to make the garland, but it is so worth it! This is the kind of craft that is easy and meditative. You can easily do it while watching tv or listening to music and just get into a flow. Bonus points if you listen to Christmas music while you make it. It probably took me a total of 3 hours of stringing to make 70′ of garland for my tree, but it felt like 20 minutes.

And there is no reason to sit there for 3 hours straight working on the garland. I made this over a few days, in between other tasks when I had time. Crafting is such an enjoyable break. So if you love crafting, keep reading for the full tutorial.

Supplies:

• Thin string (Twine is great, this is the one I used)
• Craft needles
• Pompoms (1.5″ (what I used) or 1″)

I wanted my pom poms to be pretty big, so I used the 1.5″ ones. The 1″ pom poms are much more cost effective. I ended up using more than 70 feet of pom pom garland on my tree, so I needed tons of them! I used 35 packs, or 525 pom poms total. If I had known I would need so many, I would go back and use the 1″ ones. I had to keep ordering more!

I definitely underestimated how long the garlands would need to be, but I’m a sucker for the cascading way they are hung. If you hang them without the cascading, you’ll need much less length.

Step One: Cut String and Thread Needle

I cut my strings into approx 5′ long segments because that was about as long as I could manage without tangling the string. The first thing you want to do is cut your string segment, then thread the needle and tightly knot the string. You also want to put a knot at the end of the string so that the pom poms don’t fall off, leaving a little room on the end in case you need to tie any garlands together.

Step Two: String Pom Poms

Next step is to just go ahead stringing the pom poms! You want to pierce the pom poms slightly off of the middle. They should slip on easily. If you feel resistance, go ahead and re-align them on the needle or you will have trouble moving them down the string.

Once you get them on, move them all the way along the string until the end. Space them out so theres about 1/4″ in between each pom. It is much easier to do this as you go along than to try to space them out later.

Step Three: Tie and Hang

Once you’ve gotten all the pom poms on the string, untie the string from the needle and tie off the end. Then hang them on the tree!

I ended up hanging the pom pom garlands and then figuring out the length needed to finish that string around the tree and tying them together to get the correct size. They aren’t hung perfectly, but I really love the effect they make.

This is by far my favorite christmas tree yet! The pom poms remind me of snowballs and marshmallows and they definitely show my whimsical style. I’m a sucker for the combination of white and green.

Plus I love our tree topper that we got from Crate and Barrel. The moravian star shape is super unique.

Here’s a close up of the garland on the tree:

Seriously, how cute are they?! It still makes me so happy to look at, and I see this tree about a bazillion times a day.

Every time I see the tree it makes me smile. I haven’t decorated that many Christmas trees, but this is the first one I really feel like is “my style.” And it’s super festive.

To be honest, I think all Christmas trees are beautiful if they are lit up! And I love how the pom pom garland looks lit up.

This is by far my favorite Christmas decoration. Maybe next year I’ll add even more ;)

So go ahead and make your own pom pom garland, and let me know how it goes for you!

Supplies and Decor in This Post:

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