Ayrshire Mummy: christmas craft projects

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!

Well hello there, are you feeling festive yet? Well if not, don't worry. It is a little early yet for all that! If you are though, don't let me stop you busting out the festive cheer! Either way, I hope you enjoy today's blog post!

This post is mainly about gathering your ideas. I haven't made any decorations yet myself as I wanted to get my cards and gifts done first before I started on the fun stuff. In the next few weeks as we get closer to Christmas I will be doing posts on my decoration projects though, but at the moment I just wanted to give you something to get you started as the weeks are flying in and I don't want to give you ideas and no time to make them! So enough of my prattling on, lets get started!

Today it is all about Christmas trees. I've had a good gander at Pinterest and seen some great stuff. I do love Pinterest, it is a great place to gather ideas. I do have an account but I never seem to have the time to actually pin anything. I generally just find the idea I want and I'm off! Also, I can't afford another internet addiction. Twitter and Ebay take up enough of my time! Anyway, below I'm going to share with you a few little gems of ideas I've found through Pinterest and general googling! Links to the websites with instructions are all below if you are keen to start crafting!

Plain Paper Christmas Trees

Found this simple idea on About.com, with full instructions these are so pretty and all you need is some paper! You could even use some patterned paper or add some glitter!

Cupcake Case Christmas Trees

This cute and crafty idea comes from The 36th Avenue where you'll find the full tutorial, and guess what? It is really easy!

Tissue Paper Christmas Trees

Check out these beauties from the fabulous Spunky Junky. Another fabulously simple idea which needs minimum supplies.

Yarn Christmas Trees

Bright, colourful and ridiculously simple to make, what's not to love about these trees from I DO invitations by Michelle as featured with a full tutorial on Living Locurto.

Glitter Ribbon Trees

Being the human equivalent of a magpie, I adore these glittery trees from Artsy-fartsy mamma. Fabulously festive!

Glitter Cardstock Trees

More glitter here from Landee See, Landee Do. Trees covered in beautiful glittery flowers. You could even change the design and use star shapes instead, or any other shapes you like. You could even use buttons instead of paper shapes!

Pearl/Bead Christmas Tree

Another favourite of mine is the bead tree as made by Gray Matters. Use any colour string of beads you like or you could use individual beads or pearls and glue them on in any patter you like.

Hope you like the ideas I found. The internet is certainly full of some very crafty and innovative people!