In the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, Christmas crafts create nostalgia, sentiment and guilt.
When my big boys were little, I used to be a Christmas Craft kind of mom. I’d structure creative time into our schedule, and every year, we’d make a bunch of holiday ornaments together and then deliver them on our plates of cookies when we’d go door to door Christmas caroling as a family.
Now I have a box filled with crafting supplies from days gone by, and when my daughters’ ask, I’m fortunate to squeak out, “Go for it, girls. I support you 100%.” (I jest, kind of, well, not really.)
When my sweet friend, Heather, reminded me of the low budget, high impact Christmas decor that can be achieved by simply making a striking focal point out of easy, children’s paper crafts, I was all over it, plus in around ten minutes you can create a high impact, low budget look.
I shared this craft last year, but the fun is worth sharing again, but it never gets old for my daughter.
Easy, low cost, child friendly, no stress involved – these are all prerequisites to achieve happy crafting status.
Then last Sunday, my daughter Emma came home from Sunday School having done these same paper crafts for their craft time, so I knew I could not procrastinate any longer.
The beauty of this simple paper craft is that it’s virtually free. We should all have some paper lying around, and if you are extra fortunate to own a “used scrap-booking store closet,” then you have beautiful scrapbook paper at your disposal as well.
Honestly, your young children can take on this home decor project all on their own. It’s pretty much a fool proof craft.
In it’s simplest form, cut five strips of paper.
For ease, I do not measure them, but there will be three sizes.
The shortest piece of paper is in the center, followed by the next two, with the longest two on the outside.
Gather one end together and staple.
Scrunch and staple the other end.
That’s it. If you want to get fancy, expand to seven strips of paper.
The first year I was blogging, I shared my “creative party decorations on a budget” where I made tissue pom-poms for my daughter’s birthday. (This was during the time period of my husband’s year long unemployment, and I literally had no budget for the party.) When I think of decorating on a budget, but still desire a high impact look, the combination of these two paper crafts would create quite the focal piece for any kind of festivity.
For another great DIY, paper GIFT giving idea, make sure you take advantage of my free, printable homemade Christmas coupon book.
I’m going to have to try these crafts with my kids. So cute- thanks!
Wow! You are a Christmas crafting genius! So glad I found you via Centsational Girl.
Please stop by for a visit to my blog. I am currently in the midst of a Gifts to Make series.
Be Merry and Bright!
Jen – this made me smile! It is the favorite decoration in the house for all of us, year after year! And we always have to make a few new ones because they get faded out, but that’s half the fun! I even cut out a few more paper snowflakes this year and of course i’m still using the foam ones from the dollar store. I hope Emma enjoyed herself! The silvery color w/ the white lights looks beautiful!
I LOVE these! So festive. I must ask, how do you hang them from the ceiling without damaging the ceiling? Just curious because I definitely want to make these with my daughter, Emma:) Thanks-a-bunch!
I love the pictures. I’m planning to make paper snowflakes for my Christmas trees. These paper crafts are so charming. Simplicity can be so beautiful.
Love this so much my friend, your medley of handcrafted ornaments is magical!!!
Thank you so much for linking up too!
xo
Kate
@ Elena – I just use tiny pieces of clear scotch tape and I gently peel them off when I take them down. I can’t think of any other method. My ceiling is flat paint, and i’ve done this for about 6 yrs and have had no problems.
@Heather toth, Thanks, Heather:) I thought of tape but for some reason our paint peels easily (I guess it’s cheap). Will have to figure something out to make this project work. Happy Holidays!!
@Elena, Elena, I made this activities at Thanksgiving but actually made them into pumpkins by adding leaves & a curly vine. My husband is a freak about damaging the ceiling,etc., & so I just tied them at varying heights onto our hallway light fixture as well as our chandelier. It looked darling! Food for thought…
@Becky, Great idea, Becky! Thank you so much:) I love the pumpkins with leaves and curly vines- will have to make those next Fall. Happy Holidays!!
What sweet wonderful ideas. Consider sharing them with my readers at http://sassafrassalvation.blogspot.com/2011/12/sasss-sunday-salvation-show-4.html
Christmas blessings!
We did pompoms for my daughters wedding, both in the church and at the reception venue. Inexpensive, beautiful and reusable!
http://waldenbunch.blogspot.com/2011/11/pom-poms.html
These look great! I’ve been feeling like my decor has been lacking for Christmas, but not knowing where to start, I just left it at a few trees here and there.
I will certainly make these. I have plenty of tissue paper, in silver, white, and black and we have lots of paper!
This is great! It must be on a lot of people’s minds, ’cause my daughter and I just made a bunch of new Christmas decorations from old, faded book pages. We love how they all turned out, and since the books were free and we had everything else in our stash, we didn’t spend any money to have new ornaments! I blogged about them here:
http://www.anoregoncottage.com/2011/12/christmas-theme-vintage-book-pages.html
I need to use some of my leftover pages to make ones like yours, too. 🙂
These look great! What a fun way to use up some of that scrapbook paper that is laying around ‘waiting’ for that perfect project.
The result is lovely, dreamy!
Thank you for this post! I LOVE simple paper crafts and I’m always on the lookout for good presentation.
So glad you found it. When most think paper crafts, they think “it looks like the kids made it,” but this one has a high impact that ‘s so fun. 🙂
So true! And “high impact” is my new favorite phrase!!!