Christmas is just around the corner, and naturally, when December hits, people love to decorate their homes and celebrate this holiday right off the bat. But the chances are, you’re already going to spend quite a lot of money on presents – so if you want to save up, and at the same time decorate your house with Christmassy themes, keep reading! This year we compiled 5 of the most fun, time-saving and efficient homemade Christmas decorations tips!
Christmas Decorations – How and Where to buy materials?
Be ware that some effort will be required to complete the following Christmas decor items, but such engagement should get you right in the Christmas spirit – especially if you’re accompanied by friends, a partner or family.
So, if anything, your time and effort will be spent productively. Not to mention that a lot of these hacks could last you a couple of years, so once completed, you won’t have to worry about making them again.
Be sure that before attempting any of these you’ll need the following essentials: printer, paper, scissors, sellotape, sewing kit, knife, toothpics and of course any other materials listed below:
Ginger Bread Christmas Tree Ornaments
Making gingerbread is fairly simple. The principle ingredients are: ground ginger, 1 egg, butter, sugar, golden syrup, some soda and flour. In fact, you can find the whole recipe for ginger-people here: BBC Good Food If you follow these quick steps, your ginger should come out looking perfect.
Now, as to the decorations, they are very simple to make. No, you don’t need special baking cutters, all you need is a steady hand, a knife and templates that can be easily printed out from the internet.
- Step 1 – print out a couple of themes from the internet (perhaps a reindeer face, a Christmas tree, a present or snowman – the simpler the designs, the better your creations will turn out to be).
- Step 2 – roll out your ginger dough with a rolling pin. Ensure the thickness of the dough is no lesser than 3mm.
- Step 3 – using a pair of scissors, cut out the Christmas themes from the paper, place them on the dough and draw them out either using the tip of you knife, a toothpick or something else that’s sharp.
- Step 4 – cut out the drawn out individual features from the dough – any leftover scraps can be rolled out again and the process repeated.
- Step 5 – undo the back of a pen and press down the hollow, round shape into the head of each cut-out element. That way, when the ginger elements bake, you’ll be able to attach a string to the loop, allowing the whole thing to be hung from the Christmas tree.
- Step 6 – bake, attach the strings, decorate (either by painting the elements or covering with icing) and embellish your Christmas tree!
The whole process takes literally thirty minutes to complete, with 2 hours needed for the baking (although that is effortless). So, within a few quick hours you’ll have your ginger decorations at the ready!
Christmas Chains
This is probably the simplest homemade Christmas hack of all. All you will require is some multi-coloured paper. This can be acquired in any major shop, like Tesco or Asda. But if you don’t want to spend any money, you can also print off the paper. All you will need will be a couple of sheets anyway. There are vast templates online with festive paper elements – red & white stripes, snowflakes or mini Santa faces.
If you want to really step it up a notch, we recommend colouring in the paper yourself, but that could be very laborious. The following step includes cutting out thin paper strips from the coloured paper. We recommend strips that are roughly 2cm wide and 10cm in length. Once you’ve cut these out, make sure you use double-sided tape to stick one end of the strip to the other, creating loops. Then force another strip (of different colour) through the loop and stick that together. Repeat the process. If you follow this routine, you should be able to create a chain of any desired length, which can be sued to decorate your walls, Christmas tree, mantles, fireplaces or kitchen cabinets.
It’s a quick, efficient and reliable homemade Christmas decorations solution, that will make your home to scream out with the Christmas spirit.
Dried Fruit Bowls
These guarantee a success. Not only will they emit a lovely smell for weeks without rotting, they will decorate your house in the most unique way. And don’t worry, you don’t need a special food dehydrator to do this, although if you do possess one, it renders the process much faster. All that is required for this is . . . roll the drums . . . fruit! First cut your favourite selection of fruit (oranges, apples, pears, kiwis or bananas etc.) into thin slices or slivers approx 2mm in depth. The next thing you will require is an oven.
Place the thin slices on a baking tray and spread them out across then insert them into the oven on a low setting (150 degrees) for about 5-6 hours or a high setting (200 degrees) for 2-3 hrs.
The result will be spectacular. The fruit will not only be edible, and make a good and healthy snack during your Christmas film watching runs, they will also make a great decoration. Simply stack them up in a clear, glass bowl, chuck a couple of cinnamon sticks, candy canes, Christmas confetti and you’re sorted!
Christmas Decorations – Mini Stockings
To complete this, you’ll require 1 sheet of red and white material. First, make sure that you print out a template of one mini Christmas stocking from the internet and then draw it out on the material. Mind you, it’s best if the material is made of smooth-textured fabric, so that a marker pen will leave its mark when the template is traced – woolly fabrics are difficult to draw on.
Ensure that for each stocking you trace two sides. Once that is done, cut them out with scissors and join the two by sewing them together. Remember that the job doesn’t have to be perfect! You won’t be using these socks to wear them or to hide the Christmas treats.
These are purely decorative items. So make 7 or 8 stitches and that should suffice. When you’ve sewn the two sides together, you can implement some ribbons made from the white sheet of fabric. You can use that material to cut out a white strip which you can later sew to the top of the stocking. And that’s pretty much it! It’s as simple as that – we counted that to make 6 mini stockings, you’ll require about 2hrs time.
When completed, attach a piece of string to the top to then hang it on door handles, Christmas trees, mantles, or even your dog’s collar! These are fantastic little elements that aren’t expensive to make, nor time-consuming. But they definitely capture that Christmas theme and adorn your home.
Christmas Decorative Cut-Out Labels
For this hack, you’ll require these four items: toothpick, printer, sellotape and scissors.
Step 1 involves you finding some lovely Christmas images on the internet and then spreading them out on an A4 piece of paper – you can do all of this in a Word Document. Make sure, however that you save and print the document in PDF, so your images stay in place.
Step 2 – Print them and cut them out.
Step 3 – Grab a toothpick and stick it down to the blank back of each image using sellotape.
And voilla! The homemade Christmas Decorations are done. It’s as simple as that. Now you can use these little cut-outs to stick them to your your roast turkey on the Christmas table, or in a cocktail that you’ll serve to your guest. If you want to make these labels a little more sturdy and long-lasting, you can always glue them onto cardboard. But to be honest, they work best if they’re disposable.
We highly recommend that you visit our Blog post from a few years back: Small details changing the whole interior – this post is full of tips and guidelines which will help you to easily transform your home. That post is not ‘Christmas decorations’ themed, but it still highlights some valid hacks, that will change you home completely. Remember, sometimes even the smallest of details make a difference – colour matching, an addition of a cushion, a blanket, a picture or candle here and there – it will transform the interior in a blink.
