I don’t know what it is about this year, but I’ve really been feeling the Christmas spirit early this year. I love Christmas music, but I normally don’t want to listen to it for very long, but this year I’ve already been blasting it around the house. Some of this may be that I’ve been working on projects for the blog, but some of it is just that I’m excited. I’m guessing that this will be our most fun Christmas so far, because the kids are at an age where they’re really getting excited about it, and I think that makes it more enjoyable.
The kids and I attempted to make some cinnamon ornaments the other day. These were a major Pinterest fail. I ended up wasting a ton of cinnamon, and they turned out ugly. Plus, I followed the directions on a site that claimed that if you cut out a smaller shape inside the other shape, you could have the kids put plastic beads inside and then bake them, and they would melt, making a pretty stained glass effect. Well, just so you know, that’s not true. Now, almost a week later, my house still smells strongly of cinnamon and burned plastic, and it’s not very nice.
So, since the kids were so excited about the ornaments that they made, but the ornaments were such a flop, we had to do an ornament backup project. We made ornaments out of craft sticks, pom poms, and glitter instead.
Materials for the Snowflake Ornaments:
- Craft Sticks
- Elmer’s glue
- Hot glue
- Glitter
- Ribbon, twine, or yarn for hanging
These are pretty easy. The adult needs to hot glue several craft sticks together to make the snowflake.
Put the snowflake on either a piece of paper or a paper plate. Let the kids put glue (or if they’re too small do it for them) in either dots or squiggles all over the snowflake. Then let the kids sprinkle (or in the case of a certain 2 year old, dump) glitter on the snowflake, coating the glue.
Shake off the excess glitter and set somewhere to dry.
Materials for the Christmas Tree Ornaments:
- Craft sticks
- Hot glue
- Elmer’s glue
- Pom poms
- Ribbon, twine, or yarn for hanging
The adult should cut one craft stick about 1/3 of the way across. Then hot glue 3 craft sticks into a triangle shape, and hot glue the other craft sticks across the triangle.
Have the child (or if child is too young, do this for them) put dots of glue on the tree shape. Then let them pick out pom poms to put on each glue dot to look like ornaments.
Do you have special ornaments for your Christmas tree that your kids have made?
This post is part of our Christmas Crafts & Decor Series. Be sure to check out the rest and keep coming back this month for more crafts! Also you can find all our Christmas posts in ONE PLACE! Check out our Homemade Christmas page for all our Christmas goodies.
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Cute little models! What fun for the little ones. We’ll have to try some of those. 🙂
Thanks- the kids had so much fun, and they’re so excited to have ornaments up on the tree that they made!
super cute and simple!! Love that. 🙂
Thanks! I love your name, Jolanthe!
I’m sorry about the cinnamon debacle. House smelling like cinnamon? Great! House smelling like burnt plastic cinnamon? No bueno.
Yeah, the cinnamon part wasn’t too bad, but that strong burned plastic smell just wasn’t doing much. I even opened all the windows for several hours and still couldn’t get rid of it! Fortunately, it has finally dissipated.
My girls love to make crafts and I love simple ones to reduce the potential for crying 🙂 This looks like a winner!
My kids adore crafts, but I really don’t want to spend more time putting a craft together than they take actually doing it, so right now we’re all about easiness. How old are your girls, Becky?
They’re 7, 5 and 3!
I love how easy these look – they’re going to look great on your tree. I don’t know if I’m brave enough to try the glitter indoors though! 😉
The glitter actually went pretty well, but I definitely recommend having paper underneath so you can dump the half bottle that was wasted back into the bottle!
We love using craft sticks for holiday crafts. These are adorable.
Craft sticks are so great, aren’t they? There are so many things you can do with them!
These looks so easy and fun to make! Pinning!
Thanks for pinning. They were very easy and the kids are so proud of them!
My son just walked by right as I was browsing these crafts and guess what we are about to do for the rest of the afternoon? Cute and easy. thanks.(pinning) – Christine
lol. I hope he enjoyed making them, Christine!
Looks like they are having a great time! Pinned it for you.
Thanks for pinning, Mary Ellen. The kids had a wonderful time! They love crafts!