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.








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.





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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Inexpensive & Easy To Make Teacher Gifts

Today was the last day of school for my 7 year old and my 4 year old daughters. I wanted them to have a special gift to give their teachers as a “Thank you” before they left school for Summer vacation, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money.

I found some plain wooden frames at the craft store for 99 pence each and bought two. I then used some acrylic paints that I already had on hand to paint them. First, I painted the frames white. I let them dry and then painted another coat of white paint onto them.

After they dried again, I used some stencils that I already had on hand of flowers and hearts. I got some green acrylic paint out, and then I mixed some red and white acrylic paint to make a pink paint. I held the stencil in place across the top of the first frame while my daughter dabbed the paint onto the stencil, and then I did the same for the bottom of the frame. Then I repeated this for the other daughter.

The painting did not come out perfectly. On one frame, I held the stencil a little too high when doing the bottom of the frame so it wound up not being centered properly, but it was still cute. Also, I should have let the kids paint with proper stencil paints, as the acrylic paints were a bit too moist and there was a bit of smudging that occurred as a result.

While those dried, I sat down at the computer and let my four year old list ten reasons why teachers are great, and I typed it up in a pretty font. I let the seven year old write a poem about teachers and specifically for her current teacher, and then I typed it up for her.

I printed these in the sizes needed to fit into the frames and placed them into the frames.

The result was that my girls each had a pretty framed piece of writing to give to their teachers that was unique and personal. And it cost me very little to make.



Note: If I had needed a stencil, the craft store actually sold decorative stencils made specifically to fit with the wooden frames for a mere 99 pence each.

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