Wednesday, 14 December 2011

Make Your Own Christmas Tree Ornaments

Some of our most cherished ornaments that we hang on our Christmas tree each year are the ones that the children made themselves. It makes our tree unique and adds a bit of sentimentality to our decorating of it each year. I thought I'd share a couple of the methods we used for the children to make their own Christmas tree ornaments so that you could do the same.


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Make your own ornaments out of homemade clay using cookie cutters and acrylic paints. You can make homemade clay using flour, salt and water.

-Roll it out until it is about ½ inch thick. Get out cookie cutters, preferably Christmas-themed, and your child can cut make as many as they can fit onto the surface.

-Using a sharp pencil, poke a small hole through the top of each one.

-Once these are done baking until they are hardened, paint them all white on both sides using white acrylic paint.

-When the paint dries, your child can use different colors of acrylic paints to make each ornament colorful and unique.

-When the ornaments are dried, put a tiny ribbon or string through the holes in the top of each one and tie it into a loop.

Now the ornaments are ready to either be hung on the tree or to be wrapped as presents.

Note, when not hanging on the Christmas tree, these ornaments need to be stored in an airtight and dry environment or the clay can become very crumbly.

Salt Clay

Ingredients
2 cups plain flour
1 cup salt
1 to 1 ½ cups cold water
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Directions
-Stir ingredients together. Knead it together well until it forms a soft ball.
-Cut out the cookie shapes.
-Bake in the oven at 300F for an hour or until hard.

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You can also make tiny bell ornaments out of egg cartons, pipe cleaners, paint and bells.

-Cut the bumps out of the egg cartons.

-Poke a hole through the top of each one.

-Using pipe cleaners, create loops through the “bells” to hang them from your Christmas tree, sliding jingle bells through the loops on the inside of the egg carton “bells.”

-Let your child paint and decorate them.

Now they are ready to hang on your Christmas tree!

This post is part of Get Your Craft On Tuesday at Today's Creative Blog.

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