Whether you’re living in a dorm, at home with family or elsewhere, it’s hard to get in the holiday spirit without the right decorations.
Shopping for decorations can be fun, but also quite detrimental to a bank account. One cheap alternative is do-it-yourself, although the majority of the time it seems impossible to actually create decorations impressive enough to put on display in your own home.
Here are five easy and inexpensive exceptions to those seemingly difficult DIY decorations that will be worthy of showing off. Be sure to include eggnog and some favorite holiday tunes while crafting.
Ornament Garland
Materials:
- Ornaments with closed loop hangers—a lot of them!
- One roll of thin ribbon
This project is simple; just string the ornaments on the ribbon, tying a knot around the first and last ornaments. Eventually they’ll start to form a bubbly shape.
Melted Snowman Ornament
The possibilities are pretty much endless with those clear plastic or glass crafting ornaments. Pouring paint or glitter glue into them or filling them with shredded paper are quick and easy ways to make one-of-a-kind ornaments, or even for crafting with a child.
Materials:
- Clear plastic or glass ornament
- Scarf: one piece of ribbon or fabric cut into a rectangle
- Eyes: two whole peppercorns
- Snow: kosher salt
- Hat and nose: black and orange construction paper or modeling clay
- Arms: two tiny twigs
- Craft glue or a hot glue gun
Use a funnel to pour your desired amount of salt, or “melted snow,” into the empty ornament.
Next, glue on the rest of the materials in any order. And that’s it!
Christmas Candles
All it takes is a little burlap and red or green ribbon to turn
ordinary white candles into Christmas candles.
Materials:
- Medium or large sized round candles (not in a jar)
- Burlap
- A medium-width ribbon
Take your candle and a piece of burlap large enough to wrap all the way around the candle. The burlap frays and is more flexible once you have washed it with some fabric softener. Then take the ribbon, wrap it around the burlap and tie it in a bow. Voila!
Cinnamon Candles
For this project there’s an option to use either the same round candles as used in the Christmas Candle craft, or glass candle holders that are plentiful at the Dollar Tree.
Materials:
- Candles or candle holders
- Whole cinnamon sticks
- Craft glue or a hot glue gun
The only step is to glue the cinnamon sticks vertically to the chosen medium, all the way around. This is a great project to add your own personal touch to by simply tying ribbon around it, using colored candles, etc.
Cinnamon Dough Ornaments
Here’s another decoration to customize that’s also very
child-friendly.
Materials:
- Wax paper
- 1 cup cinnamon
- 1/4 cup glue (school glue works great)
- 3/4 cup applesauce
- Optional: 1/2 cup glitter
Mix and knead the ingredients, then roll the dough out flat.
From here, this DIY decoration can be taken in any direction. Use cookie cutters to make trees, stars, gingerbread men or any other desired shape. You can also cut a circle and imprint a little hand print onto your ornament.
Once the dough is shaped and styled, poke a hole somewhere near the top so ribbon can be strung through it later on for hanging. No baking necessary—let the dough dry on wax paper.