Christmas crafts for a handmade touch to this year’s festive celebrations.
Christmas is always a big deal in my household.
You can tell that by the way it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas in my home in November!
We all get very excited about the prospect of getting our decorations down from the attic and turning our home into a cosy, Christmassy sanctuary.
In the past, my husband and I have placed a lot of importance on buying good quality, fairly expensive Christmas decorations. But I’ve found that this year my focus has changed.
Since having children – and especially having them at the age they are now (five and three) – I’ve enjoyed the more personal touch when it comes to decorations.
Sure, there’s something to be said for the high-quality, intricate, ‘classy’ ornaments, but hanging something on our Christmas tree that my children have made means a whole lot more.
Adding a personal, handmade touch to our Christmas is something that I wanted to do this year.
As luck would have it, I was sent a box of Baker Ross Christmas crafts. My children tore into the box on sight and couldn’t wait to get started. Neither could I.
Here are some of the Christmassy crafts we’ve been doing so far.
Personalised stocking advent calendars
With chocolate advent calendars the norm these days, I wasn’t sure if Sophia and Dexter would be interested in one where the only ‘reward’ each day is a new picture.
I needn’t have worried. This set of three personalised stocking advent calendars were a hit.
You get to colour in the designs exactly how you want. Then all you have to do is glue the top layer to the bottom layer, write your name at the top of the stocking and hey presto! Your own personalised advent calendar.
For this craft I’d recommend using felt-tip pens to colour in the designs because of the texture of the card. However, you do need to be careful because it can be easy to smear the colours. Just a word of warning.
Christmas gift box kit
I love these. Each set makes three different Christmas gift boxes – a snowman, Father Christmas and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.
The shapes are all pre-cut and it’s a nice, relatively simple craft for younger children. You will need some glue to stick on some of the parts (such as noses, stars and sequins) so it could get a bit messy, but shouldn’t cause too much parental angst!
To give the boxes a little gloss and extra sturdiness, I coated them in PVA glue and left them to dry.
Penguin jewel decoration kits
We’ve hung these little guys on our Christmas tree and they look so cute.
Each penguin jewel decoration kit comes with everything you need to create six little penguins.
All parts are adhesive so there’s no extra gluing required – always a bonus!
Ceramic house tealight holders
These ceramic house tealight holders are a great art activity for children.
We painted ours in stages, allowing various sections to dry before attempting others, to avoid smears and paint all over our hands. The tactic worked well.
These tea light holders look lovely when they’re lit up (you can buy some child-safe, battery operated tea lights). Sophia and Dexter use theirs as little night lights.
Stocking Christmas cards
I love the personal touch when it comes to cards.
In the past we’ve tried Merry Stickmas! sticker cards, personalised cards from PaperShaker and this year it’s the turn of Baker Ross stocking cards.
You get six blank cards in each set and can decorate them however you please. We used various stickers, mini pom-poms, tissue paper, ribbons and pens to create various designs.
And what’s nice about these cards is that they’re actually more than just cards, they can be decorations too! Just thread some string – which comes with the set – through the small hole at the top of the card and voila! Instant decoration.
Giant bauble stained glass effect decorations
These are ace.
These giant stained glass effect baubles are created in the same way as the stained glass effect owls that my children and I made for Hallowe’en.
This time however, we used a glue stick instead of runny PVA glue and it made the whole creative process so much easier to manage.
You can see a few more photos of each of these crafts over on my Chez Mummy Flickr account. Meanwhile, what Christmas crafts do you like to do with your children?
Please note: Baker Ross kindly sent me the above arts and craft sets to help my family get into the festive spirit. All words and opinions are my own and are 100% honest.
This was first published on Chez Mummy
