Creative Christmas tree ornaments

Hi everyone, welcome to this fun and festive creative craft tutorial!  I’m sure it really won’t surprise you to read that I had LOTS of fun coming up with the ideas I’m sharing with you today.  Christmas is always a crafter’s dream and I really hope you have a great time crafting too!

You’ll love making these fab Christmas tree ornaments with you kids (or just for you!),  they will make a great eye-catching addition to your Christmas tree this year.  

I’m also sharing with you a cool list of advent activities I’ll be trying out with my son throughout December, with lots of opportunities for Christmas crafts included.  Feel free to use my ideas to inspire your own!

So get out the sparkles and glitter, find all the crazy, clashing colours you can and let’s get crafting this Christmas!

Christmas fun as a family

Now my son is three and starting to understand Christmas a bit more, I thought it would be a great time to introduce him to loads of fun advent activities.  So, I bought an advent calendar that I could fill with a different toddler activity each day.  I’ve kept most of the activities really simple with a few more time-consuming ideas planned for weekends (with the idea being that if I’m having a bad day with MS I don’t feel like I’m taking on too much).

Here’s a link for the advent activities we’re going to try;

Christmas Advent Activities for Toddlers and Pre-schoolers 

Quite a few of the activities I’ve planned are (unsurprisingly) craft based, one of them is to make some decorations for the Christmas tree so I went wild in The Works and Hobbycraft, bought loads of fun Christmassy bits and set about coming up with some suitable Christmas ornament ideas I could try with my son.  

I thought it would be fun to share these Christmas tree creations here, especially as one of my goals for the month is to create more seasonal blog posts. So voila; here is a creative Christmas tree ornament tutorial for you.  Enjoy making them your own and please, please, please share how you get on, I’d love to see your fabulous creations!

Making your own creative Christmas ornaments

If you’re familiar with my craft tutorials you are probably used to me banging on about how easy it to adapt the tutorials and be creative with them so I decided to do just that!  For this creative Christmas tree ornament I took the idea behind my wacky and wonderful weaving craft and decided to give it a Christmas revamp!

It really is that easy to develop and personalise an idea.  In fact, I even created a second creative Christmas tree ornament exploring the same design but using a different colour way to show how the idea could be further adapted to suit your own Christmas colour scheme.

Creative Christmas tree ornament

What you’ll need (per tree)

3 lollipop sticks (coloured or plain)

PVA glue

3 pipe cleaners (I used some stripy ones from Hobbycraft which I loved and glittery pipe cleaners for the tinsel.  Slim plain brown pipe cleaners were used for the tree trunk)

A few sequins (I used some star-shaped ones)

A few pom poms (I bought a mixed bag of Christmas pom poms and varied the colour and size of the ones I selected to add interest)

Wire cutters

String, ribbon, raffia or yarn (I used some rustic brown string)

Instructions

Take the lollipop sticks and create a triangular frame/Christmas tree shape (you may wish to paint your lollipop sticks first).  Make sure that the ends of your lollipop stick overlap so you can stick them together with a blob of PVA glue.  

Once the glue on your frame has dried, take 2 of your pipe cleaners and wrap them diagonally across your triangular frame to decorate your tree (if working with small children cut the pipe cleaners into shorter lengths for them and they can stick the shorter lengths straight onto the ornament without having to wrap the pipe cleaners around the frame)  .  Pipe cleaners hold their shape well so you probably won’t need to stick them down but secure on the reverse with glue/tape if you need to.

Glue some sequins and pom poms (or any other decoration you prefer) onto your ornament to add some more Christmassy fun!

To make the tree trunk, take your third pipe cleaner and bend it in half over the base of your frame.  Tightly twist your bent pipe cleaner together, trapping the frame in the process.  Use wire cutters to trim the tree trunk to roughly 5cm.

Finally, tie some string or yarn etc. to the top of your creative Christmas ornament, ready to hang it on your tree.

Make it your own

As ever, there are so many ways you could adapt this tutorial to suit you!  If you don’t have any lollipop sticks to hand, why not collect a few sturdy twigs to use instead.  You could create a few tree ornaments and string them together to form a garland too.  Have a go at playing around with the colours you use, icy or jewel colours would look fantastic!

Most importantly, turn on some Christmas lights, prepare some Christmas scents and pick out your favourite Christmas tunes while you’re having fun making and forget about everything else!

I’d absolutely love to see your Christmas crafts, are you planning on doing any this year or have you made some already?  Please let me know how you’re getting on!  If you’d like some more inspiration I’ve been on Pinterest again (I love it too much) saving loads of ideas for Christmas crafts and activities which you are welcome to check out on my Pinterest account.

Happy Christmas crafting my friends x