HOW TO MAKE A YOUR OWN CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS

With a little creativity and some inexpensive materials you can make your own Christmas ornaments. Pre-made ornaments are fine. But making your own makes them uniquely your own. The ornaments described below are low cost and take less than an hour each to make. Kids and parents can make these into fun shared projects.

Toilet Roll Reindeer

What would Christmas be without Santa's reindeer? And they're so easy to make using materials already on hand or a few that are easy to buy. Take the center cardboard from a toilet paper roll and stuff it full of tissue. That gives it support.

Now cut some strips of brown felt out of an 8 1/2 in x 11 in pad. Spread a little glue around the roll and layer on the felt. Don't worry if it isn't exactly flat. Deer skin is wrinkled near their arms, legs and neck anyway.

For the head you can use another roll cut to shape and glued to the body. Or you can use an ice cream stick to make a support for the neck, then bunch up some felt for the head and wrap it for the neck. Attach with glue. Then get some small black buttons for the eyes. Use brown or gray pipe cleaners for the legs and tail. To give the legs some thickness, just spiral the pipe cleaners around some brown tissue paper.

Eraser Mouse

Christmas mice are a tradition in stories. They always wander around looking for bits of cheese and listening to their grandparents tell stories of Christmas past. You can make some from bits of pencil eraser and hair.

Save those old pencils or buy some inexpensive erasers from an art supply house or craft site. Shaping them into a little mouse is easy. All you have to do is tack several small ones together into a body and head. Or, you can glue two larger ones together and shave the body into shape with an Xacto knife. Then do the same with the head.

A little bit of yarn will do nicely for tails and round confetti works great for eyes of all colors. Maybe you can get grandpa or grandma to donate a little bit of hair to the project. You only need a couple dozen strands an inch long. With scissors, chop it up into small pieces. Then spray the mouse body with a little bit of glue and sprinkle on the hair. Let it dry and hang on the tree or set the mice on shelves.

Bead Spider

A bag of glass or clear plastic beads from a craft site will get you started making your own spider to hang from the tree. Get the type that have holes through the center. String them along thin white pipe cleaners shaped like a spider. Simple!

To make it extra secure you can spray the result with a little glue and let dry before hanging. Then tie a piece of thread around the head and hang. Or, for something a little more elaborate, make a small web from white thread. String it from one small branch to the next and set your spider in the center.

Fun, inexpensive and easy to make, these are only a few of the Christmas ornaments you can create. Hang them on the tree, from the fireplace or set them in the windowsill. Have a great time!

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