Original home decor for Christmas, cute souvenirs with your own hands. Options for crafts made from paper, dough, fabric, plasticine and natural materials.
Crafts for Christmas are much more than just knickknacks that you forget about a week after the holiday. This is a special, unique look of your home. A piece of soul invested in a gift for a dear person. An opportunity to experience the spirit of Christmas deeper. In the end, this is the time spent with the children at a common activity, and the pleasure of creativity, which is not always available to us in the hectic everyday life - when can we take it on, if not on winter holidays?
Features of making crafts for Christmas
Stores present such a wide range of different goods that it will not be difficult to find funny things to decorate an apartment for Christmas, even for those on a budget. So does it make sense to spend your free time and energy, prick your fingers with a needle, clean the table from traces of glue and do many other manipulations when everything you need can be purchased ready-made?
It's up to you, of course. There are people who do not feel the slightest desire to do needlework, and they have every right to do so. But if ever - in childhood, while studying at the institute, before marriage, which brought with it new household chores - you felt the pleasure of making something with your own hands, you should definitely try to resume this practice.
There are at least 5 reasons for this:
- Handicraft calms the nervous system and distracts from negative thoughts. A kind of meditation, but without smoking sticks and chanting mantras.
- Needlework gives you a reason to be proud of yourself when you manage to solve some particularly difficult problem or successfully realize your fantasy.
- Needlework allows you to create truly exclusive gizmos. Even if a hand-made craft for Christmas 2020 in your case becomes a wreath of painted pasta, none of your neighbors and acquaintances will have such a thing.
- By the way, here's another argument in favor of homemade products: they help us improve and polish our skills. This year you will master "hand-made pasta", in the future - carving on foam sealant, and in a couple of years, you see, buyers will start hunting for patterned things of your design. The main thing is not to stand still.
- And also needlework brings parents and children very close, if they manage to find a topic that is interesting to both. The youngest members of the family are usually curious and eager to try new things, so it won't be difficult to captivate them!
If you feel the slightest need to create in yourself, create boldly. Moreover, often needlework does not require financial investments: old scraps, scraps of beads, expired flour, cones and branches collected in the forest will be an excellent material for your future works of art.
Note! Christmas crafts are pure creativity: make them the way you see them.
Best Christmas Craft Ideas
Christmas, an ancient Christian holiday, has its own easily recognizable motives. Shaggy wreaths made of spruce paws, symbolic figurines of angels, Advent calendars, candles, pointed stars - all this is familiar to many of us and does not create difficulties in making. You just need to determine for yourself what you would like to do, and you can get to work.
Christmas wreath
The tradition of decorating the front door with wreaths of spruce branches, cones, winter berries and other natural materials came to us from the Catholic West, but it took root very well on the Orthodox land. And it is not surprising, because there is little that makes it so easy to give a home a festive atmosphere.
How to make a wreath craft for Christmas:
- Prepare a ring for the base. The easiest way is to make it from thick cardboard or thin plywood, but if you can weave several flexible branches together, the decoration will turn out to be more interesting and authentic.
- Lubricate the ring with glue and wrap with burlap, lace, mesh. It is better to hide the cardboard completely under the fabric, the branches must be left partially open - it's not in vain that you tried, weaving such beauty! A coarse rope can be used by placing it on the base coil by coil as tightly as possible.
- Lay out in front of you everything that you think is appropriate to decorate the wreath: branches of pines, fir trees or junipers, ribbons, cones, dried flowers, acorns, beads, bows, rowan tassels, tinsel. Start attaching them to the base in the order you see fit. The easiest way is to use hot melt glue for this purpose, cheaper - rope and wire. By the way, short wide candles look very beautiful in such wreaths.
- Sprinkle the finished wreath with dry snow from a spray can or sprinkle with glitter.
- Attach a loop and hang the jewelry in the designated place.
A variant of children's crafts for Christmas will be a pasta wreath. To make it, it is enough to stick tightly the cheapest dry pasta on a cardboard base, cover them with paint with the effect of gilding and intertwine with an elegant ribbon.
Note! Instead of a wreath, you can choose a less common symbol of Christmas - the sheaf-tongue. To make it, you usually need to take a bunch of beautiful golden ears, turn the stems down and tie it tightly. But in the conditions of the city, a winter "sheaf" is also suitable, in which the spruce branches collected in the park will take on the role of ears of corn.
Crescent
Of course, the wreath is one of the most romantic and beautiful crafts for Christmas, but the crescent moon is in no way inferior to it either in the first or in the second. And in originality it even surpasses: by January 7, many will acquire wreaths, but only a select few will have a decoration in the form of a heavenly body.
How to make a Christmas crescent:
- Cut out a crescent-shaped base from thick cardboard or saw out a sheet of plywood.
- Grease it generously with glue and mask it with a coarse cloth with a readable texture (the same clean burlap will do) or wrap it with rope.
- It's time for the decor. Unlike a wreath, twigs, berries, and other trinkets do not have to cover the entire crescent; you only need a catchy, attention-grabbing detail that needs to be fixed in its lower third. A "brooch" made of a pair of cones and several branches of spruce, a bunch of small Christmas balls, a piece of lace fabric cut out in the form of a snowflake and decorated with silver beads will look good here.
- Decorate the month with artificial snow, sparkles or walk on its surface with a spray from a spray can of silver paint, after covering the decor with a napkin.
- Glue the eyelet and secure the crescent moon to the wall.
Star of bethlehem
It is difficult to think of a more recognizable symbol of a bright holiday than the Star of Bethlehem - the one that showed the Magi the way to the birthplace of the Savior. Stock up on a long narrow plank, a file, sandpaper, paints, brushes, tape and get started. A little effort, and you will have your own personal star, which will light the way to your home with happiness.
How to make a craft star for Christmas:
- Paint the bar any color you feel is appropriate. Silvering, shades of natural wood, green look good. Dry, cut into 16 pieces of equal length, sand the edges with sandpaper.
- Draw a diagram of an eight-pointed star on a newspaper sheet, the edges of the rays of which will be equal to the length of your planks.
- Using the star as a guide, lay the planks on top of it, holding the ends together with glue. Let the craft dry.
- Using paint in a contrasting color, write wishes on several rays, for example, "Good!" or "Happiness!" If you do not have calligraphic handwriting, print the lettering on a printer and stick with transparent tape.
- Hang your finished star on your wall or front door.
Nativity scene
Do you feel that you are capable of more, or do you have several little helpers at once who are eager to create? Then it makes sense to set yourself a more difficult task and build not just a pretty craft for Christmas, but a whole festive nativity scene.
How to get started:
- For a den, an imitation of a grotto is required, which will help to depict any box of a suitable size. To make the cardboard look like a stone, cover it with gray-colored and slightly crumpled paper. Do not forget to install a manger platform inside.
- Sculpt figures of people and animals from plasticine. You need Jesus in the manger, the Virgin Mary, Joseph, as well as a bull and a donkey, who warmed the baby with their breath. If you get a taste, sculpt figurines of three wise men and shepherds who came to greet Christ.
- Place the characters inside the "grotto", decorate the scene with straw, fasten a foil star over the entrance to the "cave".
Note! The image of the characters of the den can be printed on a printer, glued to thick cardboard, attaching a toothpick on the back side for support, and placed inside the "grotto".
Angel
The angel who brought the good news of the birth of the Savior is the constant companion of Christmas. Figures with wings these days are found everywhere: in the form of stickers on the windows, pendants, soft toys, candles, dolls. Why not add your own winged heavenly dweller to this snow-white flock?
You can make an angel craft for Christmas like this:
- sew from felt and stuff with padding polyester;
- glue it out of paper (roll up a cone for the body, attach wings to the back, attach a bouncy ball or other suitable size ball instead of a head);
- cut out of salted dough, dry and paint (for the dough you need flour and salt, taken in a 2: 1 ratio, a spoonful of lemon juice and water).
Note! From dolls-dolls very cute angel-children are obtained, and from Barbie, Entelchimals and other beauties - angels-adults.
Advent calendar
There are Advent calendars so that the child can calculate how many days are left until Christmas, New Year or other important date. Their meaning is as follows: the place of the usual calendar grid is taken by small boxes according to the number of days remaining, each of which contains a sweet surprise or small souvenir.
How to make an advent calendar:
- Buy a set of matches - they are inexpensive, and you will be relieved of the need to glue 20-30 boxes with your own hands.
- Put the matches themselves in a container suitable for storage, and fill the boxes with prepared surprises and paste over with paper with a New Year's pattern.
- Write a number on each box.
- Cut out the silhouette of a house from thick cardboard. Cover it with festive paper as well.
- Use scribes to line up the matchboxes and stick them in the correct order.
- Decorate the calendar with tinsel, bows, cones.
Christmas candles
One of the easiest Christmas crafts for kids is themed candles. The only thing is, do not trust their production to babies, since you have to deal with hot water.
How to make a holiday candle:
- Get a multi-layered themed napkin.
- Cut a rectangle out of it so that you can wrap a candle in it.
- Peel off the top color layer of the napkin.
- Press it against the candle.
- Take a cup of boiling water and a tablespoon. Dip the spoon in boiling water, let it warm up, and gently smooth the napkin against the surface of the candle. Paraffin will melt slightly and work better than glue. Look, don't tear the paper!
- Repeat this until the napkin is completely adhered to the candle. Smooth the edges additionally.
Note! An even simpler option: put a white candle in a transparent glass, place juniper twigs around it, pour a pinch of artificial snow on the bottom, and a Christmas mood will be created. Simple and fast.
Card
There are many options for paper crafts for Christmas, but a card can be the most soulful of them, if, of course, you want to put your heart into it. And all that is required is a rectangle of thick paper folded in half and letting go of your imagination.
Techniques that can be used to make a Christmas card:
- painting;
- applique using paper, fabric, buttons and other little things;
- quilling;
- carved postcard;
- volumetric postcard 3D;
- accordion card;
- postcard book.
How to make a craft for Christmas - watch the video:
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of home decorating options for Christmas. Figurines of fairy-tale characters, real and gingerbread sculpted from salted dough, compositions from branches and cuts of trees, baskets with balls and cones, bright socks and mittens hung as if waiting for gifts, snowflakes on chandeliers, mirrors and cornices, tall transparent glasses, on which, using cut out paper templates and a spray can of artificial snow, are applied silhouettes of houses and trees, garlands and LEDs. Choose an idea to your liking and create, create, create …
