Homemade Christmas Gifts Your Child Can Make

Christmas crafts make excellent gifts for your family that they can keep as souvenirs for years to come. Shop-bought gifts are increasingly expensive, less personal and less thoughtful...how "last year"! However, Galt Toys have some exciting ideas that your child can make and do to give as gifts this year.

Photo Christmas Cards

Cheap and cheerful, these photo cards can be used as decorations for every year and make an excellent recurring gift.

You will need:

One 5”x7” glass-only photo frame

One 4”x6” photograph of your child or your family dressed in Christmas best

Safety Scissors

Glue

A pad of coloured paper
Coloured pens
Glitter

Carefully place the glass from the photo frame and ask an adult to hold it in place while you draw around it onto your coloured paper. Red or green is best, but you can use any colour. Using your safety scissors (available from Galt Toys), cut out your rectangle. Take your chosen photograph and apply glue to the back before mounting it onto the rectangle of coloured paper. In the border around your photograph, pop a dab of glue in each corner and sprinkle glitter over it. Next, use your coloured pens or pencils to write a message in the border, such as “Merry Christmas, Love From (your name).” Let the glue dry, then pop your creation into the frame. Now it is ready to be given as a gift.

Santa Christmas Hamper

You will need:

A pad of coloured craft paper
One shoebox
Cotton wool balls
Glitter
Glue
Black paint and paintbrushes
A ruler

You will first need to wrap your shoebox in red paper. An adult can help you. This will give you a blank canvas to decorate!  Next, use black paint to paint a black belt around the middle of the bottom part of the shoebox (not the lid). Once dry, use your glue to create a buckle shape, and sprinkle glitter over. Leave to dry. Glue your cotton wool balls around the edge of the shoebox lid to create a fluffy trim. For the final touch, cut a 10cm by 10cm square of coloured paper (any colour you like) and an 8cm by 8cm square of white paper. Stick the white square in the middle of the coloured square, and glue both to the lid of your shoe box to make a message box. You can write the name of the person the gift is for, or just a little message.

Christmas Cookery

Hand decorated cookies or cupcakes make lovely gifts from little people! There are many recipes online that you can follow to make a delicious treat. Children can decorate these, wrap them in cellophane (not cling film, think rigid ‘gift-hamper’-type cellophane), and make their own gift tags using craft paper, pens and glitter if desired. Why not make miniature gingerbread houses for everyone?

No matter what the end result, with all craft gifts the importance is the love that went into making it, not about the gift being perfect. Perfection comes in many forms. Enjoy!

About the Author

This article was written on behalf of Galt Toys who have 175 years’ experience in toys and education. Galt know a thing or two about designing toys & craft activities to encourage children to learn through play...and also have fun!

Christmas Organisation Week 6 - Crafty Toddler Christmas Tree

So the other week we decided to go to ikea for a little bit of shopping.  I was thoroughly enjoying myself admiring all their new Christmas stock.  When suddenly amongst it all I spotted something which really got me excited.  Something for Christmas.  Something I thought would be a perfect idea for Holly at Christmas time when she got a little older.  This was it...

Cool huh?

That's right, it's a cardboard Christmas tree, with stickers!  So, at first I was thinking how amazing this was.  What a great idea. Give the kids their own tree to decorate in the vain hope it keeps them from destroying your real one.  Common sense and fun!  

As Holly will only just have turned 1 by Christmas I thought she might be a bit young for something like this just now. So I decided to get one of these trees for next year instead. I was just about to pick one up, when I noticed the price.  The tree was fifteen quid. That's right. Fifteen quid for a bit of coloured cardboard and some stickers. Now I'm sure some people wouldn't bat an eyelid and just buy the damned thing. Not me! There are far better things I could spend £15 on! Especially when you realise that once the stickers go on, that is it! The fun is done, you can't reuse it. Did I mention it was £15?  Needless to say, we came home without one. 
 
So that got me thinking.  Couldn't I just make something similar at home for half the price? Something which could be used over and over again? You bet I could!

So I have two possible ideas to craft a reusable kids Christmas tree.  Both are simple and I'm sure they could be used for years to come. I think if you made either of these for a toddler it would probably be easier to make it yourself, but if your kids are older they could help making these trees and have a great time doing it!  So does this sound like your type of thing? If so, then read on!

Idea One

Not bad eh?

A handmade cardboard tree. Get yourself a large piece of cardboard, cut it out into a Christmas tree shape and paint it green.  If you are really crafty you could cut two interlocking tree shapes and make a three dimensional one similar to the ikea one.  I think a flat one would be just as good though, as that means you can hang it on the wall easily.  Make some cardboard Christmas tree decorations to go on the tree. Cut whatever shapes you like.  Candy canes, stars, round and oval baubles, etc.  Paint or colour them in, add any decoration you want, glitter, sequins, you get the idea.  It can be as fancy as you and your kids want it to be.  Glue some velcro tabs onto the tree and the back of your baubles and you are all finished!  You and the kids can now have fun decorating the tree over and over again.  As you can see from the picture above I'm not the only person to have this idea.

Idea two 

How cool is this?

Pretty similar to the idea above, but using coloured fabric or felt instead of cardboard. You can make it as fancy or simple as you like. You could either cut out plain shapes for baubles or make some fancier ones by sewing or adding embellishments like glitter and sequins. It seems I'm not the first person to have this idea either, as I found a lovely example of one on Craftsy (pictured above).





So that is pretty much it!  Fairly simple if you ask me! What makes it even cooler is that as you will be using Velcro the kids can take off the baubles and stick them back on as often as they like. Day after day, or year after year if it is a big hit! As I said, Holly is just a bit too young to appreciate something like this just now, but rest assured we will be making one for next year!  Although, we might even make both!  So do you think this is a good Christmas craft idea?