We made some beautiful winter crafts last year with clay and nature. We loved them so much, that we wanted to try something similar again for the fall. I am glad that we did. These fall tree mosaics came out just lovely and are perfect the upcoming season.
Whenever I look at our Christmas tree, I have to smile. Slowly over the years, all of our beautiful glass bulbs have been being replaced one by one by homemade keepsake ornaments. Our tree is filled with so much love and memories.
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My daughter has been insistent that our tree doesn’t have enough ornaments this year, so we have been working on filling it up. Salt dough ornaments are our favorite. With cookie cutters and paint, there are a million possibilities. We had an idea to press puzzle pieces into our clay to make these “pieces of my heart” ornaments.
Pasta crafts and activities are a favorite of ours. My daughter & I love working with the different types of pasta. All of the assorted shapes and sizes offer so many possibilities.
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One of our favorite crafts was a fall tree craft using pasta shells. This was a huge hit with my daughter. Moving into the holiday season, I thought that we could do another pasta tree craft, this time with a Christmas theme.
I’m sure that I have mentioned it before, but I love gingerbread. It is one of my absolute favorite things about this time of year. I look forward to baking it, smelling it, eating it and my daughter and I have fun doing arts and crafts projects inspired by it. Here are some wonderful gingerbread inspired ideas to welcome in the holiday season.
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This year because of our living circumstances we will only be putting up a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. As all of our ornaments & decorations are buried in storage until after Christmas, my husband suggested that we hand make all of the ornaments for this tree. Challenge accepted. We already have made a few here & there throughout the season.
Last night we made a couple more for our tree. My daughter loves Hello Kitty & since she is such an easy figure to make, that was our first project of the night.
What you will need:
A medium-sized plastic Christmas ball
Cotton balls
White, yellow & black foam sheets
Red felt
Hot glue & school glue (Always operate caution when using. Not recommended for small children to use)
Directions
Stuff the inside of the ornament with cotton balls until jam-packed. My daughter loved this. This is a great fine motor skill activity too.
Cut two triangles for ears out of the white foam. Put glue on the front & back and cover in a light layer of cotton.
Use the hot glue to glue ears into place. For best results apply glue to the ear not the ball.
Cut 2 black ovals out of the foam & one yellow one. Cut a pipe cleaner into six equal pieces & cut a bow out of the red felt. Use a Sharpie to draw in detail on the bow.
Glue all pieces into place using the hot glue. Buy hooks for your ornament or use a pipe cleaner or string to hang.
We made one more ornament.
Mai loves to draw & I adore her drawings. I wanted a hand drawn ornament for our tree.
For this ornament, I drew & cut out 2 identical ornament shapes out of an old cardboard food box.
I glued them together with a loop of yarn in between.
I painted the top portion silver & let it dry.
I glued the ornament down onto a piece of red construction paper & then cut the excess off to form a circle. I did this for both sides.
I cut two smaller white circles & gave them to Mai. I asked her to draw on both pieces.
While she drew, I added a bead of glue around the edge of the ball & sprinkled glitter on it. It gives it a lovely sparkly outline & covers up the seam where the cardboard & the paper meet.
When she was done drawing, I glued her drawings on both ends. This picture is of the whole family looking out the window. I will treasure this one forever.
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This has been a crazy holiday season for us. If you are a regular follower, you know that we are in the process building a house. We have been staying with my husband’s aunt during the build. She has a finished basement that has become our temporary home. We realized the other day that it is very possible that we will not make it into our home before Christmas, which means we will not be able to put up our Christmas tree. This made me a little sad. My husband suggested that we purchase a small Charlie Brown Christmas tree & that Mai and I could make all the decorations ourselves. That sounded like a wonderful idea.
I had bought a few clear plastic bulbs for us a few weeks ago to use for homemade ornaments & last night decided to make our first one.
What you will need:
A small clear plastic Christmas ornament
A Styrofoam ball smaller than the ornament & another for crumbling
White paint
Any colored felt
Button
Black foam sheet
Glue gun (Always use caution when operating a glue gun)
Directions
Take a mini Styrofoam ball & crumble it up with your hand until it is in fine flakes.
Remove the top of the clear ornament & paint it with white paint & generously sprinkle the Styrofoam on the wet paint.
Stick a marker in the ornament & put it in a cup to let it dry.
Run a bead of hot glue around the opening of the painted ornament & press a Styrofoam ball into the ball as far as it can go. Then push the ornament top into the top of Styrofoam ball.
Cut a small piece of pipe cleaner for the nose & fold it in half & press into the middle of the Styrofoam. Cut out small round pieces of black foam for the coal for the eyes and mouth. Glue into place.
Cut a long piece of felt& snip the edges so the are frayed. Wrap around the neck & tie like a scarf.
Glue on buttons to finish it off.
This will make a lovely addition to our little tree. I can’t wait to make more ornaments today with my little girl to fill it.
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As you know, we are staying with my husband’s aunt as we await the completion of our home. There is a sweet 2-year-old that lives with her & my daughter & her have become two peas in a pod. My daughter has been taking on a big sister role. She has been trying to teach and at times gets a little bossy, but it is adorable to watch. They spend a lot of time drawing and reading together & I spend a lot of time doing both with them as well. Every time they draw together my little one always asks her friend “What are you drawing?” The answer is usually the same “a house”. She loves to draw houses.
Houses are fun & easy to make and with the holiday season approaching, when I think houses, I think gingerbread.
The idea was that I wanted the girls to make gingerbread house ornaments out of Popsicle sticks. My first design I liked, but it was more time-consuming than what I had wanted for a simple craft & I did not want to repeat it several times.
I made these simpler houses instead.
I asked the girls what color they wanted their houses.
I cut squares out of construction paper in the color of their choice & glued Popsicle sticks around them like shown.
I cut out a triangle for a roof & lined the sides with sticks as well.
I glued the square over the triangle as shown.
I glued a loop of yarn around the back of each for hanging. When all the glue was dry. I gave both children their houses & let them decorate. They used buttons & markers.
They both made lovely ornaments.
My daughter wanted to hang hers right away. We do have a tree yet, but we hung it on the door knob for her.
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We are officially just 50 days until Christmas & I have a confession to make. I love Christmas. I know everyone is moaning & groaning that it is too early to get in the holiday spirit, but I just love it. I can’t wait to put up our tree and I can’t wait for Christmas carols & snow, but alas I must wait a few more weeks for those things. One thing I do not have to wait for are the Christmas crafts. What better way to start getting me into the spirit.
Last week we cut up multiple empty egg cartons to build towers with. We had so many & I wanted to put them to good use, so last night we made a simple Christmas craft using our egg carton pieces,
Egg Carton Christmas Ornaments
Cut 2 egg carton sections for each ornament that you want to make.
Paint the sections in the color of your choice & let dry.
Glue your sections together like shown.
Cut the tips off of the tall pointed sections of the egg carton. Paint them in silver or color with a marker & let the dry. Stick a piece of pipe cleaner into the hole & form a loop.
Add a liberal amount of glue to the inside of the piece & glue to the top of the egg cartons as shown.
Use glue & glitter to decorate your ornaments. Let dry.
There you have a quick & easy homemade ornament for your tree.
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A funny thing happened the other day. A group of my friends were talking about the winter & things to do with our kids. We began talking about cutting paper snowflakes. I had said that it had been so long since I had last made one that I was not quite sure if I even remembered how to. This conversation sparked us to all attempt to make snowflakes with some funny results. We were all out of practice & went through sheet after sheet of paper until we finally figured it out. This crafting adventure with the grown ups led to a couple of fun snowflake crafts at home.
This weekend was filled with Christmas parties & breakfasts with Santa. We were on the move all weekend long trying to make sure that the big guy knew that Mai really wanted that train set for Christmas.
The parties had a ton of great activities and projects for the kids to do and as we all know my daughter loves her projects. There was a cookie making station that Mai took full advantage of. They had assorted sugar & gingerbread cookies for decorating along with colored icing and assorted candies & sugars.
There was also a watercolor station, a sticker station & an ornament making one. The crafts just kept coming. My artsy little girl was in her glory. She brought home several cookies, a few new crafts & a new dolly from Santa. The ornament making reminded me that I had bought a couple of cheap clear plastic Christmas balls at the beginning of the season. I had completely forgotten about them. We kept our craft momentum going when we got home with our quick & easy personalized ornament.
What you will need:
Clear plastic Christmas bulb ornament
A black sharpie
Kid’s paint (We use Crayola’s water based non-toxic paint)
Directions:
With a sharpie draw on the name of the person you are making the ornament for. We made two, one for Mai & one for her Nana.
After you write in the name, draw random lines & closed shapes all over the whole rest of the ornament.
Paint each shape in a different color. Mai chose to just mix her colors for her ornament for her Nana because “Nana likes a rainbow.”
Let the paint dry & hang your ornaments on your tree & admire. I touched up the Sharpie lines on Mai’s Nana ornament after it dried.
