With just two weeks to go, the ghost of Christmas splurging is already upon us! The ominous feeling of whizzing through your last pay cheque weighs heavily on you as you make a beeline to shopping malls. To combat that oppressive feeling we suggest an alternative to shopping for decorations.
Buying decorations during this time of the year is nothing short of a nightmare; especially when you find yourself shelling out a few thousand rupees for a few sad plastic angels. Instead we’d suggest you get your hands dirty. Glue, glitter, paper, a pair of scissors and string; it’s back to primary school art class this December.
While all you have to do is Google up homemade Christmas decorations, we’ve made your search easier by suggesting some homedmade ornaments that are more or less effortless to make and will help you recycle. While some have been tried and tested at the Mirror Magazine laboratory, others we can’t vouch for but they sure seem simple and funky. So here goes, a list of 12 easy to make Christmas decorations- one for each day of Christmas starting from today.
The 3D Paper star.
We can vouch for this one having decorated the office with these impressive looking stars last year.
What you need:
6 square sheets of paper
Glue
A pair of scissors
Method:
Fold paper diagonally so the sheet is in a triangular shape. You can fold that in two, making a crease down the centre.
As shown below, unfold it once and make a cut from the base to the crease. Do not go all the way to the middle. Stop about a centimetre from the creased line.
Repeat along the bottom until you have a number of parallel cuts. Follow step 2 on the other half of the triangle.
Unfold the paper and starting from the middle (the smallest triangle) overlap the tips and glue them together.
Turn the ribbed sheet over and glue the overlapping tips of the next smallest triangle. Continue to do this while alternatively flipping the sheet over.
Once you’ve made six of these decorations, glue them together on one end so they look like the picture below.
Hale Storm
What you need:
Transparent wire (available at hardware stores)
White Bristol board
Glue or sticky tape
Method:
Cut out as many circles of at least 3 different diameters.
Along the length of strand of wire stick on the Bristol board circles and circles of the same diameter of the reverse side.
Salt Dough
Ornaments
What you need:
1 cup of flour
½ cup of salt
½ cup of water.
Toothpick
Acrylic paints
Method:
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.
Mix together, salt, flour, and water until dough is formed.
Knead the dough on a floured surface until the mixture is elastic and smooth. If dough is too sticky, sprinkle with flour, continue to do so until stickiness is gone. Do not add too much flour, this will dry out the dough and will cause it to crack before you get a chance to bake it.
Fashion out any Christmas ornament you like. Get creative. Or if you prefer you can simply use cookie cutters and cut out shapes like stars and fir trees.
With a toothpick make a small hole at the top so that you can run a ribbon through it and hang the ornaments.
Bake for 2 hours.
Remove the batch from the oven and allow the ornaments to cool completely.
Once they are cool to touch, paint them and allow them to dry, coat with varnish (so they can be preserved and have a shiny finish) and dry them once again before hanging them on your Christmas tree.
Christmas Baubles
What you need:
Regiform baubles, or you could put all those burnt out light bulbs you’ve stored away to use.
Paint
Glitter and glue or tubes of glittered glue.
Ribbon (if necessary)
Method:
Paint the regiform baubles and once they are dry sprinkle glitter over them or draw out designs on them using the tubes of glittered glue.
Allow to dry and you may tie a ribbon around them, string them up and hang them on your tree.
In case you’re using light bulbs- paint them and allow them to dry. You can use a cut out paper crowns to wrap around and conceal the metal top.
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