To ask for home made Xmas Decoration Ideas

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I’m trying to save money and also do a bit for the environment by not going OTT this Christmas with decorations.

I have a tree and some garlands/lights donated by my Mum (who goes mad for Xmas decorating so has enough decorations for probably three houses in her own) but I have no tree decorations. I’m not too bad with arts and crafts but find myself stumped on simple decorations that I can make with the art supplies I already have at home (and in the one to two hours of brainpower I have left after my DC have gone to bed in the evenings).

I’ve looked online but the ‘simple’ decorations it suggests are either not that simple or require buying a lot more materials and that would sort of defeat the point of not buying the decorations to begin with! 😂

DH says I don’t need to worry too much as DC are only 2yo so they won’t miss not having a decorated tree, but I want to have one for them (and for me) as I managed to convince my parents and PIL to let us have this Christmas as just our little family unit at our house for the first time and want my children to look back on photos of it and know some effort was made.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. My creative brain has gone AWOL this year.

I cut stars and other shapes out of a few sheets of white card and they coloured them in with their normal crayons, then we hung them up with a bit of ribbon or string.

I made Pom Pom baubles. Big bag of pom poms of Amazon (too lazy to make them) but of hot glue and ribbon and voila! I really like them, I have two SEN children so it saves us from shards of plastic in our feet from smashed baubles

Those little hats. Wool plus a 2cm bit of loo roll tube. You tube has the video. Google home made decorations. Loads of ideas from good housekeeping, house beautiful etc.

HereForTheHelp I love your pom pom decorations. So jolly!

OP, you could make bows from ribbons, fabric cut offs or paper.
Dried orange slices with ribbon look lovely and will make the room smell nice.

Cut different sized circles from thin card. Starting from the outside edge, carefully cut in a continuous spiral to the centre. Pull gently apart and hang from a thread threaded through the centre part. They should spin and twist. Small ones will go on the tree, or make larger ones to hang in windows or as mobiles.

The bow idea above is lovely and effective, one year I used tartan ribbon, and another time red satin ribbon.

These botanical stars look lovely!

www.houseandgarden.co.uk/gallery/botanical-stars

If you’re making salt dough ornaments, remember to poke a hole with a pencil for the ribbon! Put them in a very low oven to dry out. You can press glitter into the dough and use food colouring. Pinterest is brilliant for ideas.

Came on to suggest orange slices and salt dough but I see others have mentioned.

You can also do fruit slices with lemon, lime, grapefruit, and if you cut apple the wrong way you get a star in the middle. You can add cinnamon to salt dough for a Christmassy scent as well.

Also, if you sew, have you any old clothing/material scraps you could repurpose? Alternatively you could cut out cardboard shapes and glue fabric to them.

Ribbon tied into bows.

Paper snowflakes are lovely.

Lolly sticks glued together in star or tree shapes (or ties with twine) with old buttons or sequins stuck on.

Kirsty did some lovely embossed foil decorations out of old foil takeaway trays this year if you have any of those around. You can just emboss with a blunt pencil.

You could also melt broken crayons for something nice and colourful. Once they start to cool they'll be malleable and you can mold them or cut them into different shapes.

Homemade decorations are so much more fun. You could keep it as a tradition and get the kids involved as they get a bit older. DD loves helping make new decorations every year.