Christmas is a festive season which is full of good food, great gifts and overall, a lot of fun! It is an ideal festival where families can spend time together with each other and share laughs and make memories. People all over the world, who celebrate Christmas start preparing for Christmas weeks before the actual day arrives. Christmas menu, Christmas gifts, Christmas gift hampers and baskets and of course, Christmas decorations and ornaments are all tackled with extra effort.
It is quite self explanatory that all these things not only require time, but money as well. You need to buy gifts, buy food, buy decorations and all of this is going to cost you if not a lot, then at least, some amount of money. Those who are on a strict budget make the best of their creativity and whatever is available to them in their own homes.
Even when it comes to decorating the house and the Christmas tree, a lot of people out there make their own unique ornaments, using various ideas and patterns. Following are some of the homemade Christmas ornament ideas that you can use, this Christmas to make your personalized decorations and ornaments.
Homemade Christmas Ornament Ideas:
When it comes to anything ‘homemade’, your two strongest weapons are your creativity and your imagination. Using these two things, you will be amazed at what possibilities you have to make extra beautiful seasonal decorations. You might just need to buy two to three things from the arts and crafts stores, but other than that, the rest of the things you will be doing yourself, with your own two hands. They are time consuming, but in the long run, they are easier on your pocket.
If you want to make things easier for yourself, try selecting one theme, one major idea of sorts, around which all other decorations and ornaments would revolve around. For example, animal prints can be used as a theme. You can then incorporate animal print ornaments on your tree as well as place them on your tables and shelves. Buy yourself some animal printed fabric and use it to make beautiful borders for your photo frames! You could even gift these handmade photo frames to your dear and near ones as Christmas gifts.
If you are looking for homemade decorations that require zero effort than go out and take a walk outside and collect pine cones! Pine cones make excellent natural Christmas ornaments. When you have collected enough pine cones, you bring them back home and decorate those pine cones with different colors of glitter glue. What color you use, is entirely up to you, you may use one single color, or use different ones. Then, when they pine cones have dried, tie a string on the top of them, to hang them on your Christmas tree. You have just made yourself a pretty natural homemade Christmas tree ornament which required very little effort.
Another ‘natural’ homemade Christmas ornament include making use of citrus fruits! Apply upholstery tacks to a fruit, for example, an orange. Apply the tacks in a way that they form an intricate pattern. Then take any fancy (or plain, whatever you prefer) ribbon and loop it around the orange by cutting the notches across the orange’s navel.
Another simple yet very creative homemade Christmas decoration idea is to take out your cookie cutters and wrap them in scrapbook paper! Just use hot glue for gluing the scrapbook paper on the metal cookie cutters and you have yourself instant Christmas tree decorations!
Snow globes are perfect for Christmas and they are so easy to make that you can make one on your own, in your home, using nothing but small Christmas trees and empty glass jars! Just glue the small Christmas trees using hot glue, to the lid of the jar, and do not forget to put some fake snow in the jar. When you are done using this, just screw the lid of the jar back on and you have got yourself your very own instant Christmas scene snow globe.
If you are a beach lover, you would love this next easy homemade Christmas decoration idea, which involves using plain glass ornaments and filling them up with sand and seashells! Some people like to collect sand and shells from the far off, exotic beaches that they once have travelled to, so if you are one of those people, you can use that sand and those shells to fill in these glass ornaments, they would look lovely and for you, they would hold extra sentimental value as well. More simple homemade Christmas decoration ideas include making use of bottle caps. Collect different colored bottle caps, and glue them together into different shapes. You can use a hot glue gun for this project. A simple design would be something like where you place on bottle cap in the middle, and the rest of them in a circle around that bottle cap, to make it look like a flower! You can further decorate this pretty flower of bottle caps using glitter or beads.
Homemade Christmas Ornaments for Kids:
Kids have a ball of time on almost every function and Christmas is probably their favorite festival of all because it involves gifts, candies and decorations! You can involve your younger siblings, cousins, or your children to make some really fun decorations and ornaments this Christmas. Not only will you be making good use of the time and doing something productive, but you will also be getting more time to spend and bond with them. Make cute snowmen using light bulbs! You are more than likely to having a few of them lying around in your house. Take some white felt material or cotton and glue it directly onto the bulb. For the head of the snowman, use a cotton ball and glue beads on the ball for eyes and the mouth of that snowman. This is so simple and kids will love it.
Another homemade Christmas decoration idea for kids is making gingerbread man ornaments. All you need to do it to bake extra hard gingerbread cookies, decorate them using icing and bunties for the eyes. Next, punch a hole in the cookie and pull a string through that hole, then hang the gingerbread man on to the tree. Kids absolutely adore gingerbread man decorations.
Popcorn can also be used in making lots of interesting home Christmas decorations. Other than popcorns, you can make use of dried beans, candies and even marshmallows to make homemade Christmas garlands. Homemade jeweled ornaments can be spotted in almost every household on Christmas evening. Pins, ribbons, beads, etc can be put to wonderful use to make various homemade Christmas ornaments. You can keep your children busy by asking them to thread breads, but make sure that you supervise them, beads are small and some kids are very fond of putting them in their mouths or up their noses.
The ‘bunting’ trend is often spotted in many festive occasions and Christmas is no exception! They are so easy to make and all you need is to cut scrapbook paper into triangles and punch two holes in the top corners. You can use simple thread, or strings or to give it a more traditional look, you can even use twine to thread through the holes in the triangle. Kids love threading beads and balls, and they would love to thread these triangles, too. Hang your creative bunting on the tree.
Homemade Christmas Ornaments Using Dough:
More fun and creative homemade ideas of making Christmas decorations include using dough to make them! You can make them yourself, or with your friends, or even with kids. However, for making decorations and ornaments from dough, there are some specific ingredients you will be needing, like white flour, water, salt, cookie cutters, food coloring etc Using these ingredients you will make the ornament, then later use ribbons, fishing line, glitter paints, etc for decorative purposes. To make colored dough, mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl and add just a couple of drops of food coloring to the water. If you do not want colored dough, you can leave out the food coloring, and later with acrylic paints you can color your dough ornament. If the smell of the dough is unpleasant for you, you can add cinnamon in your dry mixture; your ornaments would look lovely and even smell wonderful. To avoid getting your dough mixture too sticky, simply increase the quantity of the flour. Then knead the dough until it is very smooth and stiff. Now to make a dough decoration, another very important thing to consider is the weight of the dough because if the decoration is too heavy, it will be very difficult to hang it on your Christmas tree. Once you have the dough ready, bring your cookie cutters out and cut different shapes. Once the shapes have been cut, you will be baking the decorations in an oven. The procedure for baking dough decorations is mentioned below.
A lot of people even make candy canes out of dough, as well, which are very easy. This procedure is simple, too. All you need to do is to mix two batches of dough, one in red color and the other one in plain white. Flatten the dough and cute two long strips, one from each batch, and then intertwine them to create candy canes! The dough decorations which you make need to be baked as well. Before you bake them, use a pen or a straw or anything pointy to make a small hole in your decoration because later, you will need to pass a string through the hole. Then, place your dough decorations on a baking sheet and bake them in the oven, at a low setting, around 15-200 degrees, for almost an hour.
Once the decorations are baked, allow them to cool, decorate them with stickers, felt markers, dried flowers etc. Your beautiful, homemade dough decorations are ready! You can use the internet to find more homemade ideas for making dough decorations. You can use different shapes, cutters, different colors etc to further customize your dough decorations. Hang them on your Christmas tree or place them on a mantel, you will surely impress your family and guests with your talent. Creativity and imagination, both know no bounds. So there is no definite number of how many Christmas decorations you can make, just by using things in your own home! If you are making something for the first time, try making it a few days before Christmas, so if something goes wrong, you would still have time to fix it. This is especially true for decorations which you are baking, like dough decorations, the gingerbread man etc. If they get burnt, or the dough is not setting properly, you would have plenty of time to start from the beginning. Old papers and magazines can be put to good use during Christmas, they can be used for many decorating purposes and not only that but they can be even used to wrap some Christmas gifts. They look really edgy and very modern. If you want to take on a bit more complicated homemade Christmas decoration projects, you will find a number of ideas on the internet. You can make flowers and stars from dough as well, which would look extra lovely, when you use them to decorate your tree.
You can use old shoelaces instead of plain strings to thread objects like beads, small plastic balls etc. Substitution is key in do-it-yourself projects, for example, if you do not have any beads, you can simply use dried beans, if you do not have white cloth, use your old white sock, instead. The main idea behind making your own Christmas decorations and ornaments is to not only get creative, but also to have fun. Include other family members in your projects as well and make your Christmas preparations more memorable.
