Easy Ornaments for Any Christmas Budget

Christmas Ornaments Kids Can Actually Make

 

We love Christmas and as much as we would love to buy loads of things, this year we decided to spend Christmas on a budget. You could choose to spend Christmas on a budget for a variety of reasons. Because this was a difficult year and financially, it makes sense. Or perhaps this year helped you reevaluate things and started to see things differently. Maybe because you want to teach your little one about helping the planet and how to avoid buying plastic or buying things altogether. Or simply because you want to spend some time with your little one and enjoy Christmas moments together.

The activities below are simple for kids to make, they are not time-consuming and can be done on a very low budget or with things you have around the house.

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Q-tips Snowflakes

I try to teach my son to love and protect our planet. And that is why we try to stay away from plastic as much as possible. And so we avoided buying Christmas decorations. We made all of them instead. Because we love to reuse and repurpose objects, we decided to make snowflakes out of q-tips. We tied 4 q-tips together with some white thread and that was it. We hung them and voila, you have a great homemade Christmas decoration. They look great. And after Christmas, we will use the q-tips so nothing gets wasted.

Lights in a bottle

We all have Christmas lights, but when you decide to change them for new ones, find alternative uses. We used our old Christmas lights to make a decoration for my son’s room. I put them in an old whisky bottle and put it by the window. You can also use any large plastic container, I used the Christmas baubles ones and it looked great. If you want to add some panache, glue some pompoms on the bottle or cover it in glitter. It’s as simple as that. And it costs nothing, talk about low Christmas budget!

Pine Cone Christmas Tree

When walking around in the park this autumn, we collected lots and lots of sticks, acorns, pine cones, and leaves. And now they came in handy. I used the pine cones to create mini Christmas trees. My son decorated them with cotton balls and I added a pom-pom at the top. To make them more interesting, I created a simple stand with cardboard and cut-outs from old Christmas cards. Don’t forget to sprinkle some glitter, it looks very Christmassy.

Hand Sanitiser Tree Decoration

It’s been a difficult year and we wanted to remind ourselves of the fact that we must be grateful for our health. And because we had loads of empty hand sanitizer bottles, we hung them in the Christmas tree. And we filled them up with shredded paper and ribbons. My son loved cutting the paper, it kept him busy for a good 30 minutes. Then, we decided to add glitter (my son is fascinated by it), but you can also paint them or add stickers, felt decorations etc. We were very happy with the final result. and every time we look at the Christmas tree, they remind us of the year we all had. And puts things into perspective.

Popcorn Garland

We love eating popcorn! And one day while I was eating popcorn on the floor with my son, we started playing with them. One landed on the Christmas tree and I realized it actually looked good. So, I used some string to thread some popcorn to make a garland. You can also add dried fruit or shapes cut out of orange peels. It is a great low Christmas budget decoration and you will have loads of fun making it. It helped my son practice his fine motor skills. But as you can imagine, he ate most of them while threading.  We’ll have to make a fresh one on Christmas Eve. A large popcorn garland and a Christmas film sound great.

Paper Snowflakes

On our Facebook group, Learning Activities for Kids, Claudia Stan shared some amazing videos with Christmas decorations. We found the snowflakes easier to make with our little ones, but there are many other decorations you can try. There are videos with simple step by step instructions, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. We made a few snowflakes and hung them in the tree. You could just as easily glue them on the window or make garlands, hang them around the house, or by the ceiling lamp.

Cardboard Baubles

We have loads of cardboard boxes because I like to reuse them. I used them to make a cardboard car for my son, you can read about it here, and this Christmas I used them as well. I made 3-d cardboard baubles. First I cut out two shapes, the actual bauble and another, slightly larger, circle, like in the images above. Then, we painted the cardboard pieces. Once they dried, I inserted the bauble in the circle and made a tiny hole to hang the decoration in the Christmas tree. It’s very simple, suitable for any Christmas budget and the little one can help too. Perfect homemade decoration!

Christmas Paper Chain

Hands down one of the easiest and Christmas budget-friendly decorations that you could make with your little one is this Christmas paper chain.

All you need is a pair of scissors, some colourful strips of paper and glue. That’s it! For the strips of paper, I’ve used only red and green, but of course, you can use any colours you want, you can decorate them or cut the edges in different styles. Also, the dimensions I’ve used for my strips of paper are 15 cm x 2.5 cm.

As I said, this is an easy craft, simply cut your strips of paper into the desired dimensions, take one strip and bend it into a circle so that the ends overlap a little. Glue the ends together and you have your first link. Do the same with the other strips of paper, folding each one through the last link to create a chain.

Cardboard tube Snowman & Reindeer

A normal gesture is after you have finished the toilet paper to throw away the cardboard tube, right? You might want to hold on the tubes since they can be used for adorable Christmas crafts.

You will find a multitude of ideas on the internet, from simple ones to more complicated. But since I don’t have “magic hands” when it comes to crafts, I made two super-easy cardboard tubes figurines: an elegant snowman and a funny reindeer.

For this craft, you will need some toilet paper tubes, some pipe cleaners, googly eyes, pom-poms and some coloured paper.

For the snowman, I wrapped the tube in white paper, added two googly eyes, drew a carrot nose and the mouth. For the scarf, I used a piece of pipe cleaner wrapped around the snowman. Under the scarf, I put two pom-poms as buttons. For the hat, I cut a circle for the bottom part, which my son coloured black, but you can use coloured paper and a strip of paper which I bend it into a circle and glued the ends together for the top part of the hat. This is our elegant snowman. It’s easy, quick and made of cheap materials that you may already have around the house.

The reindeer is just as easy. You can opt to wrap the tube in brown paper or leave it as it is since the tube is already a shade of brown. I left mine as it is. Glue two googly eyes, a pom-pom for a nose and draw the mouth. For the antlers, I used pipe cleaners. And voila! An adorable, easy to make reindeer.

Christmas tree garland

We love garlands. They are so pretty and you can put anything on that string. For this particular garland, we chose to make beautiful 3D Christmas trees.

All you need is coloured paper (I used two shades of green), scissors and glue. Optionally, you can decorate the trees with beads, cotton buds, glitter, whatever you have around the house.

I started by drawing identical Christmas tree templates on my paper and then sat down and cut them. This bit probably took the most time but if you have Christmas carols in the background and a cup of hot cocoa it’s all good fun. I used three tree templates to make one 3D Christmas tree. After I cut all the templates I gently folded each in half and glued them side to side. Decorate them however you want, punch a hole at the top of your Christmas tree and add them to the garland.

Popsicle Sticks Puppets

I saved all those popsicle sticks from this summer because I thought that someday I’d do some nice crafts with them. That day has come and what better use for them than fun, simple Christmas crafts.

I chose to make a super-cute elf and a charming reindeer. I love that they can be used as decorations or as puppets to play with.

You will need popsicle sticks, googly eyes, pom-poms, coloured paper/plain paper, paints and paintbrushes, coloured pencils (optional), buttons or shiny beads.

Start by painting the popsicle stickers and setting them aside to dry. For the elf, we painted it green and for the reindeer brown. Then I drew their heads on plain paper (I was running low on arts and crafts materials but you can use coloured paper, felt, cardboard paper for the heads). After I drew them, little hands coloured them. Then, we added googly eyes, a pom-pom for the reindeer’s nose and a shiny bead for the elf’s nose and drew the mouth. Now that the heads were done we went ahead and glued them to the popsicle sticks. For the elf, we added a pom-pom at the tip of his hat, a bit of pipe cleaner as a scarf and more beads as buttons.

And that was it. Super-simple, Christmas budget friendly crafts that are so fun to make and most importantly can bring the whole family together.

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