DIY Crafts for Christmas
Crafting at Christmas never goes out of fashion. There was once a time, before gift sets had been thought of and when gift vouchers didn’t exist, that the only gifts people would give each were handmade. Then there was a time it was fashionable to make your Christmas gifts with which ever craft you were into. Now as our wallets are stretched to the max we turn back to DIY crafts for Christmas presents. They keep costs down and there’s something quiet special about getting a present that was made just for you or decorating your home for Christmas with DIY crafts. So if you’re fancying a DIY crafting Christmas where can you start? No matter what your level of craft-ability there will be something you can tackle.
Christmas Cards – Even high streets are selling crafting bundles for you to make your cards. Plain cards and envelopes can be jazzed up with embellishments and glitter to be understated or completely over the top. You can be really ‘green’ and save last year’s cards you received and use those cut up to make new cards. If your crafting stash is a bit low or you’re just setting out on the craft road, you could team up with a group of crafters and have a card making session. You can get ideas off each other and share resources like die cutting machines and dies.
Christmas Wrapping – All you need is plain paper like brown parcel paper, an ink pad and ink stamps. Then just go with whatever you want. All over stamping or regimented in neat lines. One colour or lots. Whatever you want to do. Tied with plain string or coordinating ribbon to finish it off. You can also make tags to match to complete the look.
Jams and Pickles – Now cooking skills are need for this one and normally started a bit earlier in the year. But if you have a glut of strawberries or tomatoes you can make jams and chutneys as gifts for Christmas.
Chocolates Slabs – If cooking isn’t your forte you can always make homemade edible gifts with chocolate. Hardly any cooking skills needed. Simply melt chocolate down either using the bain-marie method – put some water in a saucepan and bring to the boil with a glass bowl on top. Make sure the glass bowl doesn’t touch the water. Once your bubbling away put the broken up cholate into the bowl for it to melt over the heat. Stir occasionally and keep an eye on it. Or carefully in the microware – break up chocolate and put into a microwavable bowl, go for 10 seconds at a time and check often and stir often. Then pour into moulds for little sweets or slabs for the new fashionable shape. Before it sets you can decorate by shaking over hundreds and thousands or mini marshmallows or anything else like fruit, chopped nuts, chilli flakes or lavender. Have a look in the posh chocolate shops to see what they are using. Places in boxes or cellophane and a bright bow to make a lovely homemade gift for someone.
Paper Chains – This is mostly the job of the little ones, as they find it very interesting and amusing. They make all the paper chains to decorate the house. Usually parents can cut strips of paper from all the old newspapers and magazines and children can sit around for hours making the chain links and holding each one till the glue had dried. This seems to be a very fascinating process. But soon the manufactures started making paper chain packs where you could like them and were made out of shiny paper. Whichever method you use, glue, staplers or pre-made packs, the effect is till helpful and can decorate your house and even your tree. Plus they are more recyclable then the modern day foil decorations.
Snow Globes –There are two versions of these you can make. One with the kids is the traditional one. Collect small toys and jam jars with their lids. Glue small toy to the inside of the lid. Fill jamjar with water and add glitter. Put lid onto the jar. Might be a good idea to seal the lid with glue so that you don’t get any accidents. Another version for adults as presents is to get a glass jar and paint white dots on the outside to give a snow effect. Add one biscuits or white bonbon sweets. Add a festive bow the neck of the jar and add the lid.