Handcrafted Kitty Stockings and Spruced Up Human Stockings

Confession time: as much as I love decorating, we have never had stockings before!

In our own house, that is. My parents have always put out stockings for us, and about 5 or so years ago my MIL bought me an awesomely appropriate high heeled stocking for their mantle. But in our house, we've never had stockings, because we've always just gone to our parent's houses for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Plus, we've never before lived in a house with a mantle before (although our last place had two fireplaces).

But now that we DO have a mantle above our fireplace, naturally we needed stockings!

And of course, in my Christmas crafting overdrive, I decided our kitties needed stockings too, and that I was going to DIY them. Enter some red felt leftover from making poinsettias, green and kitty-colored embroidery floss, white fuzzy ribbon, and some Google Images templates, and I had everything I needed to make some easy stockings.

This really doesn't warrant a full tutorial post, but basically I found a stocking shape, and three outline shapes that sort of reminded me of my cats online, printed them, cut them out, traced them on the felt, and cut out the stocking shape, and used the cat outlines to embroider the images onto the felt. I then did a whip stitch to attach two stocking shapes to each other, and hot glued on scarves made out of ribbon and the fluffy white ribbon around the top. Done!

They were quite easy to make, but did take me about an hour to an hour and a half each, with the hand embroidering. But it's simple enough to do while watching TV at the same time.

A closer look at the stockings, and the kitties that inspired them!

Hailey:

 

Topper:

(I even included the little knob defect at the end of his tail on the stocking)

And Rascal:

For some reason, the kitties all look sort of grumpy in those photos. They definitely don't appreciate all of the hard work I put into handcrafting their stockings. But they will once I fill them with Greenies treats!

As far as stockings for my husband and I, I wasn't about to attempt to embroider our images. But I was inspired by this striped stocking that I saw at Michaels, for like $15 or something. I wasn't in love with the poofys or the bells, but I liked the striped concept a lot.

So I went the semi-DIY route, and bought two much cheaper stockings. 50% off too!

Take plain stockings....

....add cheery ribbon with hot glue, and you've got instantly spruced up stockings!

I still need to iron these, and figure out a good way to hang all of the stockings from our mantle, but I must say, I am pretty happy about how these all turned out, and the price (since I was using a lot of leftovers/stuff I already had, about $12 total for the 5 stockings, plus I still have leftovers of the new ribbon I bought).

Have you ever found a quick and easy way to spruce up something store bought? And if you have pets, do they have their own Christmas stockings?