Last year I had a few coastal Christmas projects, so this year I wanted to fill in the gaps where I knew I was missing things before totally unpacking everything (Read: I wasn’t allowed to pull out Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving, so I came up with projects for me to work on in the mean time).

I thought some throw pillows would be a great way to easily (and cheaply) spice up your seating without buying something big.  I saw these great ‘no sew pillows’ on Pinterest, and decided to give the project a shot.

DIY Holiday Throw Pillows

What you’ll need:grinch4

  • Template
  • Iron on glitter sheet
  • Pillow cover
  • Pillow insert
  • Exacto knife or scissors
  • Tape
  • Iron
  • Dish towel

First of all I had to figure out what I wanted my pillows to say and come up with a design.  I decided on a lyric from one of my favorite Christmas hymns, “All is calm” for one pillow, and the outline of the Grinch’s face (because he’s just awesome) for the other.  Then I got to work on a design, keeping in mind that I would be cutting out the letters / outline, so nothing too crazy.

Once I had my templates ready, I printed them out, and picked out some pillow covers, pillow inserts, and glitter sheets at Hobby Lobby.  I ironed my pillow covers since they were a little wrinkly, laid out the template on the glitter paper, and taped them together so it wouldn’t move when tracing.

Then I used a marker similar to the color of the paper to trace the design onto the glitter paper.  I learned that holding it up to a window or having some sort of light come through makes it easier to see the design and trace.

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I used Tulip’s glitter transfer sheets which were a little easier to work with than what the other post mentioned — instead of peeling things and not cutting through all the layers, I just had to cut out the design.

Once it was cut out I ironed it onto the pillow cover, with a thin dishtowel between the iron and transfer.  After checking that the transfer was on the pillow securely, it was on to the next pillow!

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Is this not the classiest Grinch pillow you ever did see?  Proof that your inner child can come out without being cheesy or cartoony.

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After I showed Hunter the Grinch pillow, he said he needed eyes and the smirky smile, so I added them in with black puffy paint, and toned it down with some silver glitter on top.

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I learned that the bigger, Grinch template was easier to work with, and turned out a little better — the small letters were hard to cut out and iron.  Next time I’ll stick to bigger text or more shapes 🙂

Update: Once I had a Cricut, making iron on pillows was 100x easier.  This way works if you don’t have a Cricut, but if you want to make a lot of pillows a Cricut will make the cutting of heat transfer vinyl a breeze 🙂  Check out all my pillows here!

5 Thoughts on “Holiday Throw Pillows”

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