Homemade Gifts Kids Can Make
Every Christmas, I ambitiously plan all these projects we are going to tackle in the lead up- baking, decluttering and donating to charity, Christmas crafts, homemade gifts the kids can make…..
I am then alarmed to discover that December does not indeed contain 60 days, and there is not enough time for all the things I want to do.
It happens every year. Every year.
CURRENT STATUS: We have just finished working on some homemade gifts for the kids’ preschool teachers and the other important people in their lives.
If you need some sweet homemade gifts for your kids to make, you’ve still got time to make these beaded creations.
What you will need:
natural wooden beads*
acrylic paint (We used IKEA’s Mala paints.)
shoebox
necklace cord or floristry wire
Optional:
imitation gold leaf
glue
clay
How to:
Place your wooden beads in a shoebox.
Squeeze in some paint, close the lid and shake, shake, shake.
This is possibly the best part of the process- opening the box to reveal your beaded beauties.
Set your shoe box of beads aside to dry.
TIP: Jiggle the shoe box every 30 minutes or so, otherwise your beads will dry to the shoe box base.
We also made some salt dough decorations, because what’s Christmas without a little salt dough making?
You can find the recipe we use here under Salt Dough Star Ornaments.
We also had some oven-bake clay so we exercised our fine motor muscles and created clay beads too.
You can find more tips here on how to use oven bake clay.
You know that my life mantra is MORE IS MORE, right?! I think these gifts would be beautiful just with the painted beads, but we kept finding more things to add.
In a temporary moment of insanity, I bought some imitation gold leaf at the local craft shop.
Be warned: it gets messy! Best wear some gloves whilst you decorate with it!
We placed our dried beads in an egg carton and painted them with glue.
Then, we crumbled the imitation gold leaf over the top of them. It all started out very contained but quickly descended into a free-for-all mess. You have been warned.
Once our salt dough decorations were dried, we painted them and glued some gold leaf on to them.
Then the real fun begins. The stringing and creating.
We used necklace cord to create necklaces.
Floristry wire is excellent for bending into ornaments.We also made a few (unpictured) key rings.
So that’s one item ticked off the Christmas To-Do list.
How’s your To-Do list going?
* Our wooden beads were gifted to us by Cleverpatch. These cool cats provided product sponsorship of my Christmas eBook, “12 Oh Creative Days of Christmas.”
Click to purchase your copy of the “12 Oh Creative Days of Christmas.”
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