Making Christmas Decorations

Find it Decoration, Painted Porcelain Decoration, Salt Dough chains and some finger knitting on our tree

I love Christmas its an exciting time of the year to really get into art and craft.  Our house just goes crazy..  I've done homemade Christmas decorations with my children since they were really little.  I love a tree with odd bits and pieces and lots of things made by children.  My children also decorate the tree so its usually a bit of a jumbled mess with lots of decorations at the front and at kid height (which is why it has toppled over on occasion).

The jumbled mess of our Christmas Tree

So its no surprise that I themed a lesson on making Christmas Decorations...

Below is a list of what we made and YES we actually made ALL of these in one lesson.  There are going to be some lovely looking Christmas trees in Bentleigh this year!

1. Find It Christmas Ornament

This idea came from this pin.  So easy yet so effective.  My children love asking people to find all the things in their decoration.   The clear globes can be bought from art and craft stores.  There are lots of other things you can do with these clear globes.  Check out this site for some wonderful ideas.  We just filled them with things I had in the art room, pipe cleaners, feathers, Christmas sequins, normal sequins, glitter, tinsel, beads, buttons, ribbon and googly eyes.  The children wrote / drew their lists as they filled the globes.  Some children also decorated the globes with permanent markers.

2. Porcelain Christmas Ornament
I happened to have my Porcelain paints out after I got my Saturday class to paint plates a few weeks ago (pic below)

  
I then stumbled upon these beautiful porcelain Christmas ornaments at the shops.  So the Tuesday and Thursday classes got to paint these.  They turned out really well and look great hanging on the Christmas tree.

3. Salt Dough
Always a favourite in our house.  Click here for a previous post and the recipe.
I'm really happy with my method of painting with watercolours before they dry and then sprinkling with lots of glitter.  I then place them in the oven to dry,  finish off with a layer of Mod Podge and add some string.   This enables it all to be done in one lesson.  We used Christmas shaped cutters, Christmas stamps and pony beads to decorate. My daughter also came up with the idea of doing lots of little stars to glue along a string.  We have a few of these strung around our tree like tinsel.  We also attempted a few 3D ones using some 3D cutters I had. 

The Artful Parent just did a post on melted crayon salt dough decorations - that's now on my to do list for next Christmas!

Early finishers also made:

4. Melted Crayon Paper Chains
This is another wonderful idea from The Artful parent and can be found in her ebook Winter. Simply make melted crayon paper, click here for my post on how to do this.  Cut into strips and make into a chain. (Sorry forgot to take a pic as currently hanging in the art studio).  Poppy also made normal paper chains with coloured paper, including the big one hanging on our tree (in pic above).

5. Finger Knitting Chains for the tree
Yes the finger knitting frenzy continues in our house and in art class, will it ever end???  We now have finger knitting on the Christmas tree..

6. Pipe cleaner Decorations
Very easy yet a goodie.  Simply thread pony beads onto your pipe cleaner, bend into a Christmas shape (or not) and hang on your tree.

Wishing everyone a wonderful Christmas and a safe and Happy New Year!

Cheers
Fiona