Long winter evenings, Christmas, children, glue and glitter seem to be a natural combination. This time of year is the season for nativity plays, carol concerts and Christmas cards, the time when you can almost go blind sewing tinsel onto the bottom of a Christmas angel's robes and then shed tears of pride as you watch her sing carols with all the other little angels in her class at school. Or you might have stayed up late sewing braid and sequins onto a Wise Man's regalia. You'll be a rare parent or grandparent if you escape the festive season sparkle free.
Christmas Projects:Tool Kit
As well as all the public demands on your crafting skills, there are Christmas cards, gift labels and decorations to be made. Your basic essential tool kit for these will include:
- scissors
- PVA glue
- felt
- glitter
- scraps of fabric or wool
- old Christmas cards or wrapping paper
- card
Felt is such a forgiving medium for crafting and can be used for Christmas cards, decorations or gift tags; it doesn't fray, it's fairly inexpensive, easy to cut and also easy to stick with PVA or other fabric glue so the perfect medium for child based crafts.
Simple Christmas Designs in Felt
Using old Christmas cards, children's book illustrations or even small cookie cutters as templates, you can make lovely Christmas cards very easily.
Choose a simple shape such as a Christmas stocking, gingerbread house or Christmas tree, find a template you like and transfer the chosen shape onto a piece of card either by tracing or by drawing around it.
Before cutting the felt or fabric, plan your pattern with card. For example, for a gingerbread house made of felt, you will need a basic house shape in a background colour, a brown square for the main house and a roof shaped piece with a scalloped edge to go on top (see illustration below). It's best to plan with card before you start, so that you can glue everything together in the right order.
First, glue the brown square onto the background, then glue the roof shape on to match the line of the background roof and chimney. You need a little bit of overlap at the back to give colour contrast, so the individual house pieces will be a little bit smaller than the background.
When you've glued the background and house together, you're ready to decorate as you choose. If you decided on a gingerbread house theme, you can be as lavish as you like with the decorations! These projects are easy for quite small children to complete with a little tactful guidance and will give you all a great sense of achievement.
A Christmas tree in green felt looks good on a white background for snow effect and Christmas stockings can come in all colours. You can use these festive shapes to decorate Christmas cards or to make an effective display on your tree and have a lot of fun in the process.
