How to Make Christmas Tree Ornaments Out of Compact Discs

With Christmas just around the corner, many of us are taking stock of our Christmas ornaments and decorations. Perhaps you have recently moved and some of your ornaments were lost, or a box of fragile ornaments was dropped and broke, or maybe you just want a craft project that will keep the kids busy during Winter break.

The following project will help you replace or just add to your collection of Christmas ornaments with inexpensive items such as paint, compact discs and string. This project is also great for kids however, since some tools such as a drill and scissors will be needed it is best if the children have adult supervision while taking part in this project. This project allows for a lot of variation you can cut and paint the ornaments, at your option, to make a wide variety of ornaments.

Begin the project by procuring compact discs; gather one disc for each ornament that you would like to make. The simplest ornament that you can make requires only a compact disc and piece of string. Simply drill a small (roughly 1/4 inch) hole in the disc and thread a piece of string through it. Tie the ends of the string and hang the disc on the tree, with the shiny side facing out. The shiny surface of the disc will reflect your Christmas lights and other ornaments add lots of sparkle to your tree.

Slightly more complicated ornaments involve paint. Of course spray paint, my favorite medium, comes in handy for this project. Be sure to drill the hole for the string before you spray paint the disc. Metallic green, metallic red, metallic blue and metallic silver or chrome make beautiful ornaments that will fit right in with traditional Christmas color schemes. I spray paint the label side of the disc, so I still have the option of using the shiny side of the ornament if I decide to later.

Since ornaments generally are not handled that frequently one thin coat of spray paint on the disc should last a long time. If you would like the paint job to last even longer wait for the colored paint to dry and then spray the ornament with a thin layer of clear coat; this will add extra shine to the painted side of the ornament as well. If the paint does eventually chip, not to worry just spray paint it again for an easy fix.

If you wish to get really creative you can cut the compact discs into many Christmas shapes such as: Christmas trees, stars, snowmen, bells and any other shape you can think of. If you have difficulty cutting out the shapes place a small cookie cutter on the disc and mark around it with a permanent marker. Allow the marker to dry and then cut out the outlined shape. After you have cut the shapes, drill a hole through them just as you did with the simple ornaments. You may use the ornaments, as is, with the shiny side out or decorate them with metallic spray paint.

You may also omit the spray paint and make ornaments with other paints such as acrylic or enamel. Use a paint brush to paint a Christmas scene on the label side of the disc or paint a name to personalize the ornament.