It’s that time again.. Christmas is coming! Yeah!
As you may know I’m a sucker for Christmas crafts and getting right into the spirit of it. This year we have our very first (big) Christmas Tree! Our little man is 3 1/2 now so Christmas is about to take on a whole new meaning to our growing family and I couldn’t be more excited.
So what better way to get into the Christmas spirit then get our craft on? Also helps when I’m heavily pregnant on maternity leave and need to keep my toddler amused with something that doesn’t use up too much energy.
Together we’ve made two lots of Christmas decorations, some for our new tree and some as gifts.
Golden Doves
- Wooden or clay decorations
- String or twine, if needed
- Acrylic paint – metalic gold
- Glue
- Assorted beads, bits’n’bobs
To make the doves I used wooden dove decorations from last year. If you can’t find any (I bought mine from Oxfam online but they may not have the same type this year) you could make the shapes using air drying clay.
I painted the decorations gold and decided we’d use only gold coloured beads. Because, well, when I’m involved in a collab with my son I tend to take the role of art director. You know, guide his creations so they’re not too ‘fluro macaroni necklace’ type things.
While going through my large collection of beads, bits’n’bobs I ended up gathering all sorts of gold pieces including charms, chains and clips etc.
When everything was set up to go Oscar helped me to apply glue and he added all the gold beads and bits.
Clay Decorations
- Air drying clay
- Cookie cutters
- String or twine
- Glue
- Acrylic paint – We used metalic gold, silver, bronze and mint green
- Mixed beads
Making clay decorations is super easy. You can buy air drying clay at most craft shops and it’s pretty cheap.
All you need to do is roll out some clay and use the cookie cutters to make your shapes. Use a straw to poke a hole in the top for the string.
Now from here you can either leave them to dry overnight as they are, or you can play around with prints on the soft clay. We experimented with some alphabet stamps but I soon realised Oscar was a little young for this as he smushed up lots of the shapes with repetitive stamping. We managed to save one.
Once dry you’re ready to paint the decorations woo! I was going to stick with metalics again but Oscar insisted on green so we added that too. We both had a play painting the decorations, and I may have added some metalic edges to his because I couldn’t help myself. He liked it though 🙂
I added some glue to the Christmas trees and let Oscar add any coloured beads he liked, not just gold this time. I however chose the string and twine.
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