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(Renee Okumura, Buzz illustrator)

There you are on Friday night walking into a holiday party. The scent of an evergreen candle greets you. Multicolored, tiny lights outline the room. Snowflake cutouts hang from the ceiling. The Elf soundtrack is pumping from the speakers. All your friends welcome you with holiday cheer. And you notice they are all dressed in these hideous sweaters. They remind you of something your aunt wears to your Christmas day dinners. You assumed that a red T-shirt and jeans would be acceptable, but now you feel like an idiot being dressed so normally.

buzz comes to the rescue! Here are some tips for making your own ugly holiday sweater:

Supplies:

Plain green or red sweatshirt

Fabric glue

Multicolored felt

Glitter paint/Fabric paint

Sequins

Pompons

Jingle bells (optional, but fun to dance with)

All found at places like Hobby Lobby and Joanne Fabrics.

These are a few simple designs for the craft-impaired. The first is a Christmas tree. Cut out three triangles of green felt, each smaller than the last. Glue the largest one at lower center of a red sweatshirt. Then glue the medium on top of that, covering the top half of the largest one. Do the same with smallest triangle. Now decorate your tree with glitter-paint ornaments, and then sew on sequins.

Another easy design is for a friendly snowman. Cut out three circles of white felt, each smaller than the last. Glue the largest one onto a sweatshirt in a color of your choice. Then glue the medium circle above it and the smallest one above that. Use black fabric paint for charcoal eyes and mouth, brown fabric paint for stick arms, and orange fabric paint for a carrot nose. If you’re feeling ambitious, cut a top hat out of black felt or mittens and a scarf out of brightly colored felt.

If you are crafty on a regular basis, you many want to try for something more difficult. You can make a felt Santa by first cutting out a large, flesh colored circle. Glue this down in the center of a green sweatshirt. Cut out a floppy red hat, you can decorate this with white pompons and a jingle bell at the tip. Glue this onto the circle and the sweatshirt. Decorate Santa’s face with white pompons as well for a beard and use fabric paints to fill in his facial features.

You can use the glitter paint to write holiday greetings or fun designs around theses magical felt creations. Don’t be that one normal-looking person at the party!