A Handmade Christmas

Over the past few years, each Christmas myself and my family have been breaking away from the standard Christmas decorations in favour of more unique handmade crafts- both brought from craft fairs and items we crafted ourselves.

There are so many ways you can go with decorating your home and so many wonderful things to make and buy that really you are spoilt for choice, this year there is defiantly a more vintage and traditional feel- with a few modern touches. Take a look!

 Wreath- made with real holly, ivy, beautiful tree branches, mistletoe and even some hand-dried oranges. Simply buy a plain wreath (ours was wicker) and using gardening green wire attach the various components layering up the wreath as you go. Additional items can be added such as the dried orange slices (cut an orange into slices and roast in the oven at the lowest temperature for several hours). Complete the wreath with some optional ribbon and bows.

Paper chains – so simple, take any paper, cut into strips and loop together. We used some old vintage styled scrapbook paper that hadn’t been put to use.

Scented Christmas ‘baubles’ – these not only look vintage-like but have a wonderful aroma which you can choose to match your own tastes, we used a mixture of dried cloves, juniper berries and star aniese.  Take some fabric (we used white linen and hessian) cut into circles, place your herbs etc into the centre of the fabric pull fabric together and tie thread or ribbon around to hold it together. To attach to the tree use wire, attach to the ‘bauble’ at the back and make a loop, hook onto the tree. As an option you can decorate the ‘bauble’ or leave plain.

 Decoupage tree decorations – another quick and easy decoration. Using rectangles of card (red and green colours) add a Christmas themed image to the card (optional on both sides) add a little glitter, make a hole at the top and thread some ribbon through to make a loop- hang on the tree! 

Pom Pom ‘Snowballs and Icicles’ – use a pom pom maker, or make your own circle for creating pom poms. We made blue pom poms to represent ice and white for snowballs. Make the pom poms in various sizes and ensure they have a loop on them. You can use them in various ways; I simply attached them to some stretch magic and hung them by the window for the illusion that they are falling. 

There's still time to try some of these crafts!!

Please look out for my follow up blog on handmade Christmas gifts…it’s a little too early to be giving them away yet, but I have managed to make a few this year and possibly receive them too? (well I have been good this year!)