This year I challenged myself to spend no money on Christmas decorations. I think it can be a good patience exercise and it is interesting to experiment with the crafty person in yourself. Besides, I can reassure you that it will be very rewarding to know that every colorful touch of your Christmas was made by your own hands.
The indispensable thing you will certainly need for all the decorations is a hot glue gun. Other than that, keep all the ice cream sticks over the summer, all the toilet paper cartoons, empty bags of chips and plastic bottles and with a bit of patience and time you can invent your own Christmas.
1. Ice cream sticks stars
These decorations were the easiest to make. All you need is:
- 4 ice cream sticks
- 3-4 nail polish colors, one for the background, the rest for the dots / make up shades, whatever colors you wish
- some string (I used some old stockings)
- hot glue gun
2. Colorful plastic bottle balls
These decorations require a bit more work. It is fairly time consuming to cut 3 circles out of a plastic bottle, but it will get faster and faster. Other than that, they are fairly easy to create, all you need is:
- a plastic bottle
- chips bags from which you can cut your favorite colors
- nail polish optional (only if you want to make little stars as on the red ball below with a toothpick)
- scotch tape for making the colorful tape stay on the plastic rings
- hot glue gun for uniting the three circles
- string
3. Egg box conical decoration
This decoration is a bit unusual, but it was a pleasure to experiment with the shapes. For it I used:
- the plastic box covering the eggs
- multiple bags of chips, sweet, pasta for picking my favorite colors and cut them into circles
- scotch tape for fixing the circles on the plastic and uniting to cones in the middle
- string
4. Toilet paper carton snowflakes
Definitely my craftiest ones so far. It is very easy to make them, though. All you need is:
- toilet paper cartoons or kitchen towels (in case you want to use different sizes)
- hot glue gun
- string
You can be as inventive as you feel like. I have created 3 snowflakes so far, one very big for placing on the windows and two small ones. I did not paint them. I tried some home made flour paint and some turmeric paint… but the results were underwhelming. Therefore I prefer to just keep them as there are and just admire their shape.
5. Pasta decorations
I used for these decorations penne rigate and colorful pipette. The stars are very easy to make, since the penne rigate have a very regular shape. However, my Christmas tree invention was a bit more difficult, since the colorful pasta is very uneven, but I think the final result is cute. All you need for these is:
- pasta
- hot glue gun
- string
- nail polish (optional)
6. Ice cream sticks reindeer
This is by far my favorite one! It’s shape would not make you think at all about a reindeer, but thanks god Rudolf has a red nose. It is so simple, but so funny and cute. For this you will need:
- 3 simple ice cream sticks
- brown makeup shade
- make-up remover pads and some electrical tape for creating the eyes
- one red berry
- hot glue gun
- string
Not sure if I can create something that will overthrow the cute reindeer, but let’s see that in my next post :).