Gold Four-Leaf Clover

You don’t need to try to find a four-leaf clover, you can make your own! This glittery gold four-leaf clover is an easy DIY project to add a little luck to your St. Patrick’s Day decorating.

This gold four-leaf clover is a really fun and easy craft that has a little nostalgia tied to it as well. Do you remember looking for four-leaf clovers in the yard when you were a kid? I do! We would spend lots of time doing this because if you found one it was lucky! It’s amazing what kept us entertained back then when you went outside all day and didn’t come home until the street lights came on. Wow, I am really showing my age now, huh? 😉

I know that St. Patrick’s Day is not as big of a decorating holiday as others, but it is always fun to add in a couple touches. These gold four-leaf clovers are a great way to add a simple touch of decor without going overboard with all the green. Although I did that too! Ha! I will share my St. Patrick’s Day decor with you soon.

Technically, I believe the official Irish symbol for the holiday is the shamrock. While all shamrocks are clovers, not all clovers are shamrocks. Shamrocks have three leaves whereas the four-leaf clover, just as the name implies, has four. The shamrock carries religious ties, while the four-leaf clover is considered a sign of good luck due to its rarity. So, they get intertwined for St. Patrick’s Day in the end, but I think it still works for the luck factor. 🙂

We happen to have a birthday in our house on the actual day so I am pretty much relegated to decorating for the holiday indefinitely. LOL! Not that I mind though, as I love to decorate for any and all holidays!

There are multiple ways you could decorate with these little DIY four-leaf clovers. I ended up making mine into napkin rings which I will show you how to do in this post as well. They could also be made into a pretty garland, put on a wreath or just used as stand alone decor, as a few examples. What else do you think you could do with them?

Watch the quick video

Don’t want to read all the instructions? I have included a video in this post showing you how to make this gold four-leaf-clover. If you can’t see the video, turn off your ad blocker. Also, if you ever want to slow down the video, just click on the three dots in the lower right hand corner of the video and you can change the playback speed. If you want more detailed instructions, continue reading.

Supplies to make a DIY gold four-leaf-clover

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• Gold glitter fabric sheet – here is similar on Amazon, just in bigger size
• Hot Glue Gun
• Scissors
• Needle and gold thread
• Ruler
• Pencil

How to make a gold four-leaf clover

I found this gold fabric sheet in the felt section at hobby lobby. It is perfect for this project because it is stiff while still being flexible enough to bend. I also love the glittery look to the clovers so that was just a plus. It is about the same size as a sheet of paper. I was able to make 8 four-leaf-clovers from one sheet so it is a good deal!

The first step is to mark some lines where we will cut it on the back of the gold sheet. Measure down 1.5″ from the top on each side and make a small mark with a pencil. 

Next, line the ruler up on those marks and make a line across the sheet. Then make some marks every 1.5″ across the top of the sheet. Lastly, connect those marks down to the line. So essentially you will end up with five 1.5″ squares and a small leftover piece which we will also need later.

On one of the squares, draw two humps at the top edge of the square. They don’t have to be perfect, this will become the leaf shape for the clover. If you want to get precise about it, you could mark the center to make sure the humps are equal sized. I just eyeballed it.

Now, cut along the hump shapes at the top.

Use this piece as a template to trace the shape on the rest of the squares. This way you don’t have to draw the hump shapes every time.

Cut out the clover leaves and stem

Cut out the rest of the clover leaves and you will end up with 5 leaves and one extra piece. Place one of the clover leaves to the side to save it for another one later. 

On the extra small leftover piece of gold sheet, you will make a stem for the four-leaf-clover. Taking up as much of the space as possible, draw a curved stem that is bigger on the bottom similar to the picture below. Then cut it out.

Use this one as a template to draw the remaining stems. Draw and cut out the whole sheet of clover parts. Pull aside four leaves and one stem. Now you are ready with all your parts for a gold four-leaf clover.

How to assemble the four-leaf clover

First, ready a needle that is threaded with some gold (or coordinating) thread and knot it at the end three times. I didn’t have an actual metallic gold thread on hand, but this yellow-gold color was close enough. You just don’t want to use a color that is going to stick out as you will see a bit of the thread from the front of the four-leaf clover.

So far the clover leaves don’t look much like real clover leaves but we are going to fix that now. Take one of the leaf parts and fold it in half glitter sides facing each other.

Next, fold back the bottom corners on each side, accordion style, until they line up with the middle fold. It resembles a clover leaf much more now, right?!

Keeping the bottom pinched, take the needle and push it through all four layers of the gold sheet, towards the center of the bottom of the leaf. Slide the leaf down along the thread until you reach the knot.

Repeat that step with all four clover leaves. When you get the last one on, push all the leaves together and pull the thread taut. Push the needle back down through the first layer of the gold sheet only, going through the glitter side and coming out the back of the clover. Cinch the thread tight before knotting it off. I would make 3-4 knots just to make sure it is secure. It is a little tricky to get the knot close to the sheet due to the folds but the closer you can get it, the tighter the clover leaves will hold to each other. 

Add the clover stem

Now you have a gold four-leaf-clover without a stem. Hold your stem to the clover leaf to see where you think it looks the best.

Add a dab of hot glue to the top of the stem on the glittery side. Glue the stem onto the middle of the back of the clover leaf.

How to make four-leaf-clover napkin ring

Like I mentioned above, I made some napkin rings out of 4 of my clovers. To make the napkin rings, I just used an empty paper towel tube. I have used this method before on these turkey napkin rings and these patriotic napkin rings. With both of those, I covered the cardboard tube with some fabric. This time I used some leftover shiny gold foil streamers from our son’s graduation party decorations. If you don’t have streamers like these, you could always use some fabric or napkins to cover the tube, or even just paint the tube gold.

For these napkin rings, I wanted the actual rings to be hidden for the most part, since I wanted the four-leaf-clover to be the star. So I cut them only about 1/2″ in width. I measured and marked 1/2″ around the tube in several spots and cut it off with scissors.

Then I wrapped the ring with the streamer, making sure to glue it down in some spots as I went along and at the end (on the inside of the ring).

Then I just hot added some hot glue around the center of the four-leaf clover and glued it to the napkin ring.

I think they turned out great! The only thing that bothered me a bit was that the shade of golds were off. The clover leaf is more of a yellow gold than the napkin ring but that is ok. I don’t think anyone will notice, do you? 

Here is what it looks like on a napkin… I think I accomplished the ring being hidden at least. Cute, huh? 🙂

As if you can’t tell from the napkin rings, some of my St. Patrick’s Day decor involves a tablescape. I will be sharing that with you soon but first I have one more St. Patty’s Day craft to share with you. Chat soon friends!