Christmas on a Budget: Decorations

Christmas Decorations

How is it going with getting your Christmas Gifts ready? So far we have looked at Christmas Gifts on a Budget and then those Intangible Gifts .  While you are busy with getting those gifts ready for Christmas, decorate your house with some lovely crafts that you and your children can do which allows you to decorate your home simply and beautifully without spending a whole lot of money.  Your children will love it too.

Its funny, I love my children crafting but I always liked the shop bought tinsel and decorations.  But I find the children's enjoyment of festivities is directly proportional to how involved they are.  This year I decided to let them do everything! We might not get everything done but I want them to take ownership of this and I know its special for them to see all their decorations up for everyone to see.

So the first decorations we made were Paper Snowflakes.

Paper Snowflakes Tutorial (finally Lesley:)

We had a look at a couple of templates but really they didn't make much sense to me.  Maybe because I have some flu and my brain seems to be rather thick or maybe its because the creative side in me, refuses to copy other peoples designs.  I eventually ventured into the frightening world of Paper Snowflakes all by myself.  (dramatic I know but I always love a bit of drama in my day)

So here we go, excuse the amateur photos!

First you can start with an A4 piece of paper.  I have scrap white paper (recycled) but you can do this with colour paper, old newspapers or even tracing paper - really anything goes.

 Fold a square

Cut the extra bit off

Fold the triangle over

 Fold the triangle again.

I have drawn a design in a black marker but this is only so that you can see clearly what I have done.  If you want to draw a design on the paper, rather use pencil.  You will find that to design a snowflake the first couple of times, you will want to draw a design, but eventually you will be able to do it freehand!

The black bits are the ones you want to cut out.  The point at the bottom is the centre of the snowflake.

This is what it will look like once its been cut out.  You can see that I still need some lessons in cutting along the lines, but doing this at 12 o'clock at night when I should be in bed and not wearing my reading glasses may have aggravated the situation..  Once it's cut out, unfold it very gently so as not to break this delicate creation.

Beautiful even if I have to say so myself:)

Easy peasy.  

So here are some others that I just did to give you a few more ideas- but once you get the hang of it, you'll really let your creativity flow.

Here's something a little more symmetrical.

And a paper snowflake that is very simple.

 

You can see that I am getting tired of colouring in but hopefully can see what I am doing.

And the finished product?

 This was the finished product in our front window.  Aren't they beautiful?  I only made 2, the rest were cut by my children without any pattern.  Once they worked out how to do it, they just went crazy and just wanted to cut more and more.

The look lovely by the window and if there is a slight breeze they twirl beautifully.  I just used a regular punch and made a hole at the top and the bottom of the snowflake.  Then I connected them with fishing line, but I think any kind of string would probably work.  

Happy Crafting! 

Our next Christmas Decoration will be making Christmas trees out of magazines.