There are some wonderful homemade Christmas decorations you can make to decorate your home and give it a lovely festive feel
You personalize your Christmas crafts so you have unique ornaments around your home that reflect your own personality, and you can also save some money by making your own instead of buying expensive store-bought ornaments.
Christmas Candy Cane Decorations
Here’s how to make your very own Christmas candy cane decorations, these timeless cotton candy canes look wonderful hooked onto the Christmas tree.
Try sewing them on to a Christmas stocking or adding to a homemade Christmas gift to give it that extra special touch.
What You Will Need
- 1 red and 1 white skein of cotton
- 1 red pipe cleaner
- Piece of red ribbon
- Scissors
How To Make Them
- Open the cotton skeins and snip the ends of both loops leaving you with 4 separate bunches of equal lengths, 2 red 2 white.
- Take hold of one red and one white bunch and tie them together into a single knot around the top end of the pie cleaner.
- Twist the two colors around the pipe cleaner to make the stripes on the cane and then knot the ends together around the bottom of the pipe cleaner as you did at the top.
Clay Christmas Decorations
My children loved making these clay Christmas decorations… and they loved coming back to them even as adults when they began to decorate their own Christmas tree and have a family of their own… They don’t have to be perfect you’re just making memories 🙂
What you will need:
My homemade clay recipe is perfect for making any clay ornaments, give them as a gift or hang them on your own tree year after year!
- Some clay
- Rolling pin or large drinking glass
- Round or holiday themed cookie cutters
- Plastic straws
- Toothpicks
- Acrylic Paint, glitter, and other decorative materials
- Ribbon
How to make them:
Step 1. Lightly dust the work surface and rolling pin with cornstarch or flour.
Step 2. Roll out the clay just like you would sugar cookie dough until it’s about 1/4″ thick.
Step 3. Cut out some simple round or a variety of shapes with the cookie cutters. Left over clay can be gathered into a ball and rolled out again if you work quickly enough.
Step 4. Use a straw to make a hole for hanging the ornament.
Step 5. Decorate your clay ornament with paint, glitter, and so on. If you will be panting a picture on to the ornaments, you will find it easier to draw the picture on with a pen or pencil first.
Step 6. Finally, loop a nice piece of ribbon through the hole for a finished look and easy hanging.
DIY Beaded Christmas Tree Ornaments
These homemade Christmas decorations are simple to make and they look very effective when hung from the Christmas tree! You can make these using most crafting beads and they are great fun to make either with your children or on your own!
What you will need:
- Pipe cleaners
- Plastic transparent beads ( I’ve used 5 to 10 mm )
How To Make Your Beaded Christmas Tree Ornaments:
- You will need to bend the end of a pipe cleaner into a 90 degree angle. This will stop the beads from fall off the end of the pipe cleaner whilst threading the beads on.
- Thread the beads onto the pipe cleaner stopping about 1/2 inch from the tip.
- Twist the two ends of the pipe cleaner together to make a circle and then spread the beads around slightly to help cover the join.
- Your beaded pipe cleaner is now ready to shape. Attach short beaded lengths of pipe cleaner to add a striker to a bell or berries to holly.
- Hang your finished ornaments on to the tree with cotton or invisible thread.
A Variation
Instead of joining the beaded pipe cleaners together twist the ends of the pipe cleaner separately to stop the beads falling off, this will create a beaded strand. The beaded strand can be shaped into a letter enabling you to spell out a name or Christmas message!
Hope you enjoy making yours as much as we did 🙂
Homemade Wreaths
Creating homemade wreaths can be very easy and cost-effective; it doesn’t have to be a work of art, the main thing is to give your wreath a warm and welcoming feeling.
One of the main reasons I prefer to make my own wreath is that I can easily strip it down each year to give it a new look and feel. So if you have an old seasonal wreath lurking about in the attic that’s looking a little dull but still has a bit of life left in it, strip it back and spruce it up with one of the simple ideas bellow.
Fruit And Cinnamon Wreath
What You Will Need
- Vine wreath
- Dried fruit (I have used orange and apple)
- Cinnamon sticks
- Berry sprays
- Cones
- String
- Strong glue
Method
- Weave the berry spray in and around the sides of the wreath using a little glue to secure them if needed.
- To make the fruit and cinnamon parcels, tie the cinnamon sticks together with a piece of string making sure you cut each piece long enough to tie 2 or 3 cinnamon sticks together with enough left to wrap around the wreath.
- Once you’ve tied the cinnamon sticks together with the string, take a piece of ribbon and thread it through the dried fruit and around the cinnamon sticks and finish by tying it in a bow.
- Attach the fruit parcel to the wreath with the string and then secure them in place with glue if needed.
- Glue the cones on the homemade wreath between the fruit parcels (if you’re using cones that have a stem attached to them you can usually weave this into to vine without having to glue it.)
Tags and Bows
This is a very quick and cost effective way to decorate a wreath using a bit of card some ribbons and a few sparkly sequins.
Method
- Create six gift tags out of card (embossed card gives it really nice touch).
- Write a seasonal greeting or personal message on each tag and decorate with a few sparkly sequins.
- Attach the gift tags to the wreath with some ribbon or small pegs and then finish by tying different sized bows on to it.
A DIY Christmas Nature Wreath
By Ruth Ann Adams (Evensville Indiana)
I created this wreath for my step-daughter and her fiancee for Christmas, they are outdoor enthusiasts. They live out in the country surrounded by woods, so I thought this would look good with their decor.
I started with a 20″ wreath with pine cones and added a 50 light strand of red, white and green lights. I love bottle brush trees, so I made them the focal point by putting them in the center of the wreath.
I took a birds nest with a red bird and added it to a medium sized snow covered pine pick, and hot glued it to the right side of the wreath. I was able to find rusted looking metal snow flakes and a birchwood style deer and NOEL sign and added them to the wreath.
The red, green, white and gold plaid ribbon seemed to pull it all together.
Sparkling Christmas Tree Star
This sparkling Christmas tree star was homemade years ago by one of my children, it’s still going strong and even now takes pride of place at the top of the tree (priceless)… It’s a nice project to do with the kids during the festive period, I can’t think of anything better at Christmas than filling the tree with happy memories.
Supplies:
- 6 silver pipe cleaners + 1 for attaching to the tree
- Clear and colored plastic pony beads
- Small silver bullet beads
Method:
- Cut the six pipe cleaners in half to make twelve strands. Wrap one strand tightly around the middle of the remaining strands.
- Spread the strands out to make a star shape and begin to add the beads. We used translucent plastic pony beads, six on each strand one blue followed by one clear bead.
- Continue with the color pattern until you reach the end of the strand then secure the beads by placing a tightly fitting small silver bead on the end.
- Repeat this process with each strand until the star is complete.
- Attach the finished star to the top of the tree with the remaining pipe cleaner and stand back and admire it.
Felt Christmas Decorations
I loved making these homemade Christmas decorations, they were quick, inexpensive and very easy to make. You can make them in any shape you like.
Over the years I’ve made boots, bells, angels, Santa’s and even gingerbread men. So don’t feel you need to keep to the tree, star or heart shaped ones you see in these photos.
What You Will Need
- Pinking shears
- Felt
- Buttons, sequins or gems
- Ribbon
How To Make Them
- Draw and then cut out 2 felt shapes using pinking shears, then draw the same shape in a smaller size and cut that one out with plain scissors.
- Using fabric glue attach the smaller shape to one of the larger shapes and then secure it even more by sewing it on. Next sew on some lightweight buttons, sequins or gems for decoration.
- Pin the two larger shapes together trapping the ribbon between the top of the felt shapes then stitch all the way around, leaving a small gap that’s just big enough to push some stuffing through.
- Hang the decorations on the Christmas tree and enjoy!
Felt Christmas Tree Stockings
You can make small Christmas tree stockings to decorate the tree or larger stockings to hang from the fireplace.
What You Will Need:
- Red felt
- One or more of the following, cotton wool, white felt, fur, or toy stuffing
- Ribbon
Method:
- To make a small decorative Christmas tree stocking, draw the shape of a stocking onto your red felt and cut out carefully.
- Trim the top of the stocking by gluing some cotton wool across the top. When the glue is dry, punch a hole at the top of the stocking and thread it through with ribbon.
- If you prefer to make a Christmas stocking that you can fill with treats or a larger one to hang from the fireplace, draw a stocking onto your red felt. Cut it out and then trace around the first stocking to create a second and cut this one out too.
- If using felt or fur for the stocking trim. Cut two thin strips the same length as the top of the stocking shape and then glue them on with fabric glue. (You can use pinking scissors to create a fancy edge as I have but they look just as good with a straight edge).
- Using blanket stitch, sew the edges of the stocking together leaving an opening at the top. Glue some cotton wool or toy stuffing around the top to decorate it and sew a piece of ribbon on, to hang it with.
- You can personalize these homemade Christmas decorations by writing a name on it using a glitter-pen or try stitching the edges in a brightly contrasting color.
Snowman Pencil Holder
By Samantha Thurston (Southern New Jersey)
FOR KIDS AND ADULTS OF ALL AGES
I am sure there are different variations as to how this can be made but this is what I used and how I did it… its pretty simple.
What you will need:
- Some type of semi skinny can with or without removable lid (soda can may not be the best choose if you want your snow man to be big) I used an old Biscotto Flavor Wafer Stick container
- White paper (I used card stock because it is thicker and holds up better than regular printer paper)
- Sharpie or black marker
- Either orange paper to make the carrot nose or an orange marker to draw on the nose
- Brown paper for stick arms (I used card stock)
- Your choice of color for the hat (I used Origami shiny red paper which can be found at any craft store)
- Blue paper for the back ground of the snow man (Again I used card stock)
- Scissors
- Glue (I suggest not using a glue stick because when I used it the paper didn’t stick as well)
- Three different round TRACEABLE images to make the body of the snow man (I used duck tape for the bottom, bottom of a glass for the middle and Aveeno Daily Moisturizing lotion for the head) You can really use anything depending on how big or small you want your snowman to be as long as they are different sizes.
Instructions:
- Start with the background of the snowman which will be your blue paper. Depending on how big your container is measure how much you need to have to completely wrap around the whole container without overlapping and cut away the extra.
- Glue blue paper to container (remember don’t overlap because it will look silly)
- While you wait for your “sky” to dry lets begin the body of the snow man…Take a sheet of white paper or card stock (whatever you choose to use) and take the biggest traceable object for the bottom of the snowman and begin to trace it ( I suggest using a pencil in case you mess up)
- Repeat step 3 using your second biggest traceable object and your smallest traceable object and cut all three out.
- If you would like the sharper edge effect…simply trace the edges of all three of the circles with sharpie or black marker
- You now want to glue the snowman together… Take your middle circle and glue it the biggest circle and the smallest circle to the middle circle (its not difficult) LOOK AT THE PICTURE TO GET AN IDEA!
- Take your black marker or sharpie and draw equally sized “rock buttons” on the middle circle
- To make the stick arms take your brown paper (I did the free hand) and make stick like arms and cut them out. Again its not rocket science I am sure you can figure it out. Refer to the picture if needed.
- Glue the stick arms partially to middle circle of the snow man
- To give it the effect of you actually sticking the sticks in the snowman I took my black marker and outlined the sticks with a semi circle
- Make small “button rocks” (I drew five circles in a mouth shaped way) for the snowman’s smile.
- For the nose… take your orange paper and think of what a carrot looks like and cut it out. OR – simply draw the carrot on. Refer to YOUR SNOWMAN to see how big or small your carrot nose should be. Yours may be smaller or larger then the one in my picture.
- To give the carrot more of an effect draw lines with a pen on the carrot
- Glue the carrot to the head of your snowman
- For the eyes you want to color two evenly sized “button rocks” slightly larger than the pebble mouth but smaller than your buttons going down the middle of your snowman
- For the hat…take the color of your choice and cut out a top hat
- Glue the top hat to the top of your snowman (I thought about adding a scarf but I did not in this one…You may do so if you wish)
- Glue the entire snow man to the container (I glued the middle of the snowman the spine like area and didn’t flatten it out).
- Go back to your container and cut out several small white circles for snow flakes (or if you are feeling really creative make mini snowflakes!)
- Glue those snowflakes all over the container.
- Last but not least if you would like to add snow on the ground…simply cut out a small strip for the bottom and glue it to the container!
Thats it, You are finished… Happy Holidays.
I hope you enjoyed these homemade Christmas decorations!
As you can see I didn’t make them all, and I would love to see hundreds more of your decorations on this page. So if you make your own this year be sure to send photos of them so we can update this post. Share yours by posting here.