Creating beautiful holiday craft decorations on a budget is not nearly as difficult as it sounds. Every year, people spend millions of dollars on expensive store bought decorations, when in reality many simple holiday crafts can be made at home inexpensively, using many things you may already have hanging around your home.
What Can Homemade Holiday Crafts be Used for?
The better question in this case is, “what can’t they be used for?”. Several types of holiday crafts can be made at home to serve a variety of purposes. This type of craft is great for teachers to implement in the classroom to give their small children something to bring home for the holidays or serve as something simple for adults to make to add a little pizazz to their tables or mantle decor. The possibilities for using holiday craft decoration s are endless and can easily be customized to meet your holiday home decor needs.
A Few Holiday Craft Projects
If you have never made hand made beautiful holiday craft decorations on a budget before you may be at a loss when trying to come up with project ideas. If you are drawing a blank here are some simple instructions for creating a few unique and beautiful holiday craft decorations.
Pine Cone Christmas Trees
If you live in an area where enormous pine cones fall from the trees and trip you whilst you try to walk to your car, take advantage of the season and gather a few large undamaged pine cones from your yard to use for this project.
Making pine cone Christmas trees is very simple and only requires a small paintbrush, a bottle of glue, some glitter, a handful of colorful beads and some old newspaper to control the mess. Most people have most of these items, however, if you need to buy them they can all be purchased from your local dollar store for less than five dollars.
To begin, lay your newspaper down on a flat surface and laying your pine cones on top of it. Using a paper plate or non-food container, pour out some glue so that it can be used easily. Using your paintbrush, brush all of the arms of the pine cone with a thin layer of glue, working quickly to prevent drying. When you’ve finished, open your glitter container and gently shake glitter over the pine cones so that it sticks to the glue in a mostly even coat. If you’re looking for a little extra coverage, you can hold the top of the pine cone and rotate it on its side to fully cover the arms in glitter.
At this point you have two options, you can either leave the pine cone as it is to try or you can add ‘ornaments’ to your tree by using a small spot of glue to adhere a colored bead to the end of each arm, before allowing it to dry. Allow to set on the newspaper for approximately 2 hours before moving to avoid damage.
Golden Table Settings
Another way of creating beautiful holiday craft decorations on a budget is to make handmade table decorations. As far as materials go you will need a small basket, a can of cheap gold spray paint, a bag of holiday hard shelled nuts and a few fake clusters of fake red berries. Chances are you will not have all of these things at home, however, you can purchase materials to make 2-3 settings for less than $10.
Like the pine cone project, you will want to use newspaper when making these holiday craft decorations because the spray paint step does tend to get a little messy. Start by laying your paper down on a flat surface and pouring your bag of nuts on top. Using your spray paint, put a heavy coat of hold on every nut so that the original coloring does not show through. Allow the nuts to dry for about two hours. Once they have dried, arrange your nuts in the small basket, adding a few red berries as an accent here and there. You can also add a small pine cone or a few fall leaves if you’re looking to add a bit more color.
Clove Oranges
Another traditional holiday craft decoration that is loved by many children are clove oranges. This project is extremely easy to make and you can make at least a dozen for less than $10. You will need to purchase a bag of oranges from your supermarket as well as a few bottles of whole cloves, which in most cases look like small thumbtacks.
This holiday craft project is not usually messy and can easily be completed by even young children. All you need to do is pour your cloves into a bowl, and then use them to ‘plug into’ the orange rind so that they stick out all over the fruit except for on the bottom so that it can sit comfortably.
After the cloves have been added the orange will have a unique spicy holiday smell that will last for several weeks. You can set these on tables, mantles and even balance them on top of decorative glasses as part of table decor.
Just because your finances do not allow you to go out and purchase expensive decorations does not mean you have to go without. Creating beautiful holiday craft decorations on a budget is relatively simple and many of the projects can be reused year after year.