Make Unique Christmas Ornaments

Be creative and make your own Christmas decorations! You can use nearly everything in your craft store and even things such as fruit as well. Why not bright colors by using fruits, glitters and paint? Here are 4 projects that you will never grow tired of!

Beaded Christmas Tree Ornaments

Why not make your own ornaments to include in your Christmas collections? It's fun, easy and simple. You can use things like leaves, beads, floral wire and more. Floral wire is the best because it's easy to work with. You will need wire cutters as well to complete this project.

Here is what you will need:

1.) Green floral wire

2.) Beads: Gold, silver, clear, red, green and any color that you'd like to use.

3.) White, gold and silver, furry/fuzzy garland... You can really use any color that you like.

4.) Glue gun

5.) Glitter - an assortment.

Instructions:

To make the ornaments, you can use your imagination and make several types of shapes, you can even use the wire to shape it in stars.

1.) Take the green or gold floral wire and cut 10-20 10 inch pieces or more depending on how much beads you have

2.) Take 4 pieces of wire and string them with gold foil beads

3.) Once the wires are filled, take the wire and shape it into a design

such as a star, circle or spiral and twist wire together with pliers

in a neat fashion. Take the furry/fuzzy gold and silver garland and wrap

around the ornaments when finished.

Note: Take the remaining wire and repeat steps with different beads and colors. It's your choice.

Woodsies- Make your own wooden cutouts and Christmas ornaments

Why not let your children make their own ornaments using a variety of materials? You can use wood, plastic and just about anything.

1.) Go to Michael's Arts & Crafts

2.) Check out the Wood section

3.) Find the large assortment of a wooden product called woodsies

4.) Select a few sizes and shapes

5.) glitter

6.) beads

7.) gold and silver foil

8.) Fine sand paper

9.) plastic sequins

10.) Non toxic paint such as red, green, gold, silver and any other washable colors

11.) Clear varnish

12.) Gold and silver spray paint.

13.)Tiny hand-held wood drill.

I would also recommend taking your time and shop the isles for anything sparkly and pretty that will make your project festive, fun and unique!

Instructions:

1.) Take the woodsies and gently sand them to make their surface smooth.

2.) Wear a mask so that you or your little helpers do not inhale the fine particles

3.) After the sanding area has been cleaned and the woodsies are free of sand dust, you can begin

4.) Take 8 woodsies and first decorate in your way with natural pieces with beads, sequins and then take outside and spray with varnish and let dry.

5.) Take the next 8 and paint them red, green, silver, and gold.

6.) Use your imagination and decorate as you wish.

7.) Continue to do this and even add a few photos to some of the ornaments to make them special.

Fuzzy Pipe Cleaners Stars

This is a really simple project. You can use fuzzy and furry pipe cleaners to make Christmas stars and ornaments as well. You will need some wire and string to hang them with! Again, you can go to any craft store and purchase fuzzy/furry pipe cleaners of every color and they're cheap!

1.) After you have purchased your pipe cleaners, take them out and shape them as stars by bending and twisting them. You can take 3, twist in a circle and make a 5 or 6 pointed star. You can even use an assortment of colors in each star to make them pop!

2.) After you have shaped the stars, place large foil covered beads on the ends.

3.) Make sure that the beads are secure and then lightly coat with spray adhesives.

4.) Quickly take the fuzzy's and sprinkle them with glitter to coat them.

5.) Hang stars outside to air out because the spray adhesive is usually toxic.

If you have ingenuity, you can also use the green fuzzy pipe cleaners to make tiny trees.

Dried Citrus Circles as Ornaments

Yes, you can use dried fruit to make garlands and even round translucent circles as Christmas ornaments.

Instructions:

Here is what you do:

1.) Take an Orange, lemon and even things like kiwi's, and anything that has an interesting shape.

2.) Cut them into slices, to preserve their shape. When you are finished, take the pieces and put them into the stove or oven to dry them. The lemon and oranges with retain their shape. You can also take the fruit slices and hang them outside as well to dry them, but make sure that you protect them from birds and wild critters.

3.) Once the fruit has dried, take the pieces and spray them with a resin coating or wood varnish and let them hang to dry outside above a tarp or some type of plastic tarp to drip dry.

4.) Let the ornaments dry for at least 3 days

5.) Once they have dried, use tiny hand drill to make holes and hang string from them.

6.) You can even take strawberries and dip them in a resin coating to preserve their color as well!

The Classic Pine Cone Flocking & Glitter works

This is a classic! You learned how to do this is grade school right? Like in Kindergarten? I did! Ok, nearly everyone can get pine cones right? Why not go outside, gather your own and do something nastalgic? Do you have glitter? Do you have glass beads? If not, go and get some!

Instructions:

1.) Gather your pine cones

2.) Get your glitter, and tiny glass beads. You can even use seed beads as well. You can also take the seed beads, place them in a baggy and then hammer them to make fine gritted glass. Be sure to use gloves and safety goggles as well, to protect yourself from the timy splinters of glass.

3.) Elmer's glue or spray adhesvice.

4.) String - old fashio cotton thread or embroidery thread will do the same thing!

Take the pine cones, and spray adhesive onto the edges of the cones. let glue set for 5-10 minutes and then sprinkly glitter onto the edges. If you roll the cones, make sure that you only do half, letting the first part dry and then roll the other cones. This will prevent you from ruining your cones and the glitter from falling off and then flaking off.