Christmas Crafts

“On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me: three French Hens, two Turtle Doves, and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.” – Frederic Austin

This week we are going to look at Christmas crafts, nothing too complex and complicated, just some fun easy to do crafts that look great around the house at Christmastime.
 
Every year before Christmas when I was little my aunt, brother, and I would make crafts. She would come up with some really clever, classic, and cute ideas. Some were very simple and some a little bit more work but we always had fun making them, and I still have them all and use them to decorate the house at Christmastime.

We would get ceramic ornaments and use different paints to paint them with, we would decorate pine cones, we made red and green puppies, nut cracker ornaments, and my favourite...the pearly Christmas ornament. I've decided to share a few of these crafts with you this week.

Hope you enjoy them,

Samantha

How to make  a “Pearly” Christmas Ornaments:

You will need a glue gun, a satin ornament ball 2 ½ inches in size, roll of pearl beading in the colour of your choice (you can buy this at Michaels in the ribbon section), ribbon (shear gold is my favourite to use but green, red, or any other Christmasy colour works as well), and little decorations such as bells, flowers, etc.

Start at the top of the satin ball and glue the end of the pearl beading to the top. After that twirl the beading and glue it down, keeping it tight and close together. When you reach the end you should be able to twirl the beading to fit the bottom perfectly, so that it’s flat. As weird as this sounds, the almost finished product should be a satin ball with a pearl coating.

Add decorative touches to the top. You can glue on a bow, bells, flowers, etc. Make it unique!

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I love Christmas, and I love crafts…so what can be better than Christmas crafts! I grew up doing crafts with my mom all the time, and Christmas was no exception. We always make homemade Christmas cards, and we've made various decorations through the years, including painted glass ornaments, paper candy canes, and accordion snowflakes. One year we even made Christmas Crackers complete with little gifts, chocolates, bible verses and jokes.

I've decided to share the steps on how to make Accordion Snowflakes, they can be either fun or elegant looking, and are fairly straightforward and easy to make.

Happy Crafting!

Nicole

Accordion Snowflakes

Stuff you’ll need:       
 - Legal size paper (the proportions of 8.5x11 doesn’t work very well)
- Stapler
- Scissors
- Tape
- Pencil (optional)
- Thread (optional)

                                

Step One: Fold your paper into an accordion approx. 1/1.25 inches wide. If the last fold doesn't line up exactly, then trim it to size, otherwise it won’t work right.

Step Two: Fold your accordion in half, unfold, and staple on the fold line. Now it should look like two little ‘fans’ connected in the centre. Fold in half again, along the staple.

Step Three: This is the transformation step! Now, you have two choices…if you want to you can plan your design and draw it on with a pencil, or if you’re like me you can just design as you cut. You need to cut through all layers, from both sides of the paper…but be careful, if you cut all the way across it will make your snowflake smaller. The smaller, and more intricate your cuts, the more lacy the snowflake will look.

Step Four: Now it’s time to unfold your snowflake, and fan out the two sides. You should be able to fan it into a circle with the staple at the centre, and two ‘seams.’ Tape the seams edge to edge (not surface to surface).  Now you have your snowflake!

Step Five (optional): If you want to hang your snowflake up, you can either tie a piece of thread through one of the holes, or tape it to the edge.

Now it can snow inside!