Easy Rudolph Ornaments

These easy Rudolph ornaments are fun to make and share this holiday season. These come together with the most basic supplies and are perfect for making with the kids.

I got everything for this project at Dollar Tree. So, you know it is going to be a cheap and easy project that is perfect for the kids!

Supplies

Gold Pipe Cleaner

Clear Bauble

Red Button

Craft Eyes

Brown Paper Bag

Scissors

Glue

Directions

Attach the gold pipe cleaner o the top of the ornament and form Rudolph's antlers.

Have the kids cut or tear the brown bag into bits.

Fill the ornament with bits of the brown bag

Glue the eyes and button nose on the ornament.  Allow it to dry overnight then hang on your tree or share with someone special.

You can find all of my ornament crafts here

Mickey Mouse Jingle Bell Ornaments 

Green Button Tree Kid Made Ornaments

Making a handmade ornament with the kids can be a lot of fun for the holiday season! These button trees are so easy to make and adorable for gifting something handmade from the heart this Christmas. Everyone loves a kid made ornament to display on their tree! 

Last weekend I found a great deal on dyed craft sticks! 80 for $1. What a bargain! This inspired us to make a ton of fun craft stick ornaments to share this holiday season. I am going to be bringing them to you, so that you can make something cute with your kids to share with friends and family.

These kid made Christmas ornaments came together in just a few moments. We used hot glue for instant gratification, but you can use white or PVA glue if you have patience!

You will need:
4 craft sticks, I used green.
Buttons
4" of  thin ribbon
3" of thin ribbon
One small bell
Glue

 Make a triangle shape and glue it together.
With your remaining stick, cut it in half. This will be your tree base. Glue it on the bottom.

Glue buttons on to the tree in any pattern you prefer. We used blue and green for this ornament and loved the way it turned out!

Flip the tree over. Thread a small bell on the 4" section of thin ribbon. With the bell in the center, glue it on the tree so that it dangles to the middle section of the tree.

With the other 3" of thin ribbon make the loop for hanging from the tree!

Now your button tree ornament is finished. Hang it from your tree, attach it to a wrapped gift, or share with someone special!

This was a cute and fun project to make with Rolf. We love kid made ornaments and have several other variations of this to show you over the coming weeks. From my family to yours; Happy Holidays!

Ribbon Tree Ornament Craft

I am so excited to decorate my trees this year! I have already been playing around with some cute handmade ornament ideas!

Today I have a really economical and adorable DIY ornament that I know you are going to want to make! It costs just about $2 to make a dozen of these! They come together so easily that making a dozen is no problem at all!

This post contains affiliate links or sponsored content.

These are cute for decorating a tree, or adding a little something to a wrapped gift!

To make these ribbon tree ornaments I used:

• A spool of ribbon I bought at Walmart for 97 cents
• Chunky Craft Sticks
• Glue
• Scissors
• Pencil

Directions:

• Begin by laying 4 craft sticks together, draw the outline of a tree on them.
• Cut the sticks to shape the tree.
• Cut the tiny top triangle from the scraps to avoid wasting a whole craft stick!
• Cut small bits of ribbon to cover the tree shapes. Glue them on and trim.

•  Now glue the ribbon covered craft sticks onto one more craft stick.

• After gluing all the sections on to the base craft stick, flip it over and add a small loop of ribbon so that you can hang it!

This is a fun project to do with the older kids, and these are really pretty lovely in their simplicity! I have a short video of the process to share with you. I would love it if you gave it a thumbs up!

I can't wait to hear what you have planned for holiday crafting!

You might also like these cute DIY Mickey Ornaments!

Easy Ribbon and Craft Stick Ornaments

This easy ribbon tree craft is a fun way to decorate your tree this holiday season. These are easy to make, economical and perfect for sharing with your friends and family!

This post contains affiliate links. If you click and purchase I make a small commission.

You can mix and match ribbon colors, or stick with one color, whatever you prefer. I used a thin strip of ribbon that fit perfectly with my chunky crafty sticks.

Supply List:

5 Craft Sticks

Glue

Ribbon

Scissors

A Pencil

Directions:

• Line up 4 craft sticks
• Lightly draw the outline of a tree on the craft sticks, as you can see we simply made slanted lines.
• Cut the craft sticks per the lines you made.

• I made a tiny pointy triangle from the scraps of craft sticks for the top of the tree.
• Cut and glue ribbon to fit the cut craft sticks.

• Trim the ribbon to fit.
• Now assemble your tree and glue it on to the remaining craft stick.

• Cut 6 inches of ribbon and form a loop, glue this to the back to act as an ornament hanger.
• Allow to dry, then hang from your tree, or share with someone special this holiday season!

These were so easy to make! Last year I added them to my wrapped gifts to add something extra to the presentation.

We have so many other fun Christmas ornament crafts you will want to check out. A few of our favorites include:

Mickey Mouse Jingle Bell Ornaments

Ribbon Tree Ornaments

Mini Mickey Mouse Jingle Bell Ornaments

As soon as a hint of winter is in the air the kids and I start to clamor for Christmas. We want to decorate, bake and shop! And we want to do it now! This year we started asking Adam about getting our tree ready in October. He knows us too well and he reminded me that we did this with Halloween and by the time it rolled around we were so over that holiday already.

This year we got our early Christmas fix by making a lot of fun ornaments! There is nothing like giving or receiving a kid made ornament, and these are especially fantastic because they are Mickey Mouse themed!

This post contains affiliate links or sponsored content.

 These are so easy and economical that you can make a dozen of these for $3. To make mini Mickey Mouse Jingle Bell Ornaments you will need:

2 sizes of jingle bells; You will need 2 smaller and one larger bell per ornament
Super Glue
Thin ribbon

Instructions:
Begin by threading a 6" section of thin ribbon thru the loop on the larger of your bells.
Tie a double knot in the end to keep it secure.
Next, glue one of the smaller jingle bells onto the side of the larger bell.

 Now glue the other bell onto the other side.
Allow to dry.

I loved these mini sized Mickey Mouse Jingle Bell Ornaments! They were really fun to make and display and we will absolutely be sharing these with friends this Christmas!

We used hot glue to begin this project because the kids can handle the glue gun, I added a bead of superglue to hold these securely. You can use school glue or hot glue, but I recommend the drop of superglue as a precaution. These are so cute that little hands are going to want to grab and shake them!

 Thinking Cap

Dustin fans need this cap to do all of their best thinking!

Stranger Things Eggo Pop It

Make viewing night an event with this fun Stranger Things Eggo card game!

 

Ann Arbor T-shirt Co. Hawkins Middle School A.V. Club

This is such a cool shirt for Stranger Things fans! Wear it with pride any and everywhere!

 

PEZ Stranger Things Gift Set Dispensers Plus 6 Candy Refills - Lucas and Dustin Pez Dispensers

Stranger Things fans are going to love this Pez dispenser set. It is perfect for displaying after the candy has been gobbled up.

 

Monopoly Stranger Things Edition

The classic board game, Monopoly, gets a dose of weird fun with the Stranger Things edition.

 

Stranger Things Lite Brite

This lite brite is made just for fans with some iconic scenes from the first 4 seasons. See what you can create with this nostalgic toy.

 

Loungefly Stranger Things Mini Backpack

Tote all your cash and goodies around in style with this zip around wallet!

 

Stranger Things Calendar 

This wall calendar features all of the cast and scenes you love from the show. This would be such a fun and functional gift idea.

 

Things Stranger Bracelet

This charm bracelet is the perfect accessory for any fan girl!

 

Stranger Things Upside Down Capsule Toys

These upside down capsule 2 packs are perfect for a surprise gift for a serious fan!

Stranger Things Plush Blanket

This super cuddly blanket is perfect for keeping cozy during all of the new episodes.

 

Funko Action Figure: Stranger Things 3  Pack 

Add these 3 action figures to your growing collection of Stranger Things goodies. They have so much detail that it is impressive!

 

Hawkins Middle School Yearbook/Hawkins High School Yearbook

These yearbooks are so much fun to look at after a good Stranger Things binge watch!

 

Funko Ornament: Stranger Things

 Stranger Things fans are going to love adding Eleven to their tree with this Funko ornament!

 

Funko Pop! Television: Stranger Things - Steve with Hat and Ice Cream

Steve looks awesome with his hat and an ice cream in this Funko Pop figure for collectors! It would be strange if you didn't get one!

Making Christmas Magical: How to Get Your Kids Involved in Decorating, Baking, Wrapping & More

Christmas is a season full of warmth, wonder, and the joy of togetherness. While it’s easy to get caught up in the hustle of gift-buying and to-do lists, one of the most meaningful ways to celebrate is by involving your kids in the heart of the holiday preparations. Not only does it create lasting memories, but it also helps children feel valued, connected, and excited to contribute to family traditions.

1. Deck the Halls—Together

Let your kids be part of transforming your home into a Christmas wonderland. Hand them a string of lights, a box of ornaments, or some garland and let their creativity shine—literally!

Tree Trimming: Assign each child their own section of the tree or invite them to hang up their handmade or favorite ornaments.

Kid-Made Decorations: Salt dough ornaments, paper snowflakes, handprint wreaths, and popcorn garlands are perfect DIYs that kids can help make and hang.

Window Art: Let them use window clings or washable paint pens to create snowy scenes on windows or mirrors.

2. Bake Holiday Treats as a Family

The smell of cookies baking is one of the best parts of the season. Let your kids become your mini sous-chefs for some kitchen fun.

Cookie Cutters & Decorating: Sugar cookies are perfect for little hands. Provide frosting, sprinkles, and candies for a decorating station.

Family Favorites: Teach your children the recipes that have been passed down, whether it's grandma’s fudge or your go-to gingerbread.

Gift Baking: Have them help assemble cookie tins or hot cocoa jars to give as gifts to teachers, neighbors, or friends.

3. Turn Wrapping into a Fun Event

Instead of doing all the gift-wrapping solo at midnight, turn it into a cheerful activity.

Wrap with Style: Give your kids simple tools like tissue paper, ribbons, and gift bags. Let them help wrap gifts for siblings or relatives.

Personal Touch: Kids can draw pictures or write names on tags. Fingerprint reindeer or snowmen tags make wrapping personal and fun.

“Santa’s Helpers”: Assign each child a secret wrapping mission, like wrapping all of Grandma’s gifts in her favorite color.

4. Let Them Help with Shopping

Bringing your kids into the process of giving helps them understand the true spirit of the season.

Budget-Friendly Choices: Give them a small budget to choose a sibling or parent gift. Even dollar store finds can become treasured keepsakes.

Handmade Gifts: Encourage crafting personalized gifts like photo frames, beaded ornaments, or coupon books.

Giving Back: Involve them in donating a toy or volunteering to shop for a family in need. It teaches compassion and gratitude.

5. Create Your Own Christmas Traditions

Kids love the predictability and comfort of family traditions. Involve them in choosing or creating ones that reflect your values and personality.

Christmas Eve Box: Let them help fill a box with pajamas, a movie, popcorn, and hot cocoa for a cozy night.

Lights Tour: Choose a night to drive around town in pajamas with cocoa, rating the best-decorated houses.

Ornament of the Year: Let each child pick or make one ornament each year to add to the tree and build a memory collection.

Story Time Countdown: Wrap 24 Christmas or winter-themed books and open one each night for a festive bedtime routine.

When you involve your kids in decorating, baking, wrapping, and new traditions, you’re doing more than just checking tasks off a list—you’re creating lifelong memories. These small moments help shape the way they’ll remember Christmas—and maybe even how they’ll share it with their own families someday.

Find more favorite Christmas crafts here:

Mickey Mouse Gift Tags

Button Tree Ornaments

Nail Polish Ornaments

Nail Polish Painted Ornaments are a great way for tweens and teens to craft up something pretty for the Christmas tree! These are easy and economical with supplies from the dollar tree for a fun decoration to share this holiday season.

I have a tendency to hoard nail polish. I can't buy just one color. I am compelled to buy them all. As I was browsing my collection, I realized I could be doing so many things with my nail polish, and I wanted to try using it for decorations!

I picked 2 pretty shades, specifically one with confetti, and grabbed a 2 pack of ornaments from the dollar store.

First, I carefully removed the top.

Then I poured in a touch of each nail polish.

The first attempt at this craft, taught me an important lesson.

You must allow this to dry before replacing the cap, or the nail polish will remain liquid.

To dry the polish, I recommend blow drying on the cool setting for about 2 minutes, but be careful to not place the dryer right up against the ornament!

This is such a great and easy craft. The ornaments turned out lovely and were so much fun to share! We made red and blue ones!

You can find all of our ornament craft ideas here

You might also want to check out these Christmas tree inspired snacks.

Beginner's Guide: How to Carve Handmade Woodcarvings

 

Handmade wood carving crafts combine the beauty of nature's materials and the ingenuity of manual carving and are loved by many. With the development of wood carving, more and more people have become interested in exquisite wood carving crafts and are looking for ways to learn wood carving techniques. After all, it is a very pleasurable thing to carve a lovely little wood carving yourself. If you are also a beginner learning wood carving, then this guide is a good one to have.

Step 1: Prepare the required tools

1. Basic Engraving Tools: 

As a beginner, you do not need to buy advanced carving tools that are difficult to handle like the masters do, but just some basic engraving tools will suffice. For example, a flat knife, small saw, pencil sharpener chisel knife of different widths, as well as V-shaped knife and U-shaped knife for carving details.

2. Auxiliary tools

sandpaper, brushes, clamps, pencils, sketch paper.

3. optional tools: 

as a beginner who is not very good at using various shapes of carving knives, you can prepare an electric carving pen.

Step 2: Design Draft

To make a wood carving craft, beginners first need to design a draft. According to their own ideas, find similar works and copy, draw on the draft paper. Because wood carving has many different carving techniques, wood carving draft is mainly divided into hollow relief, three-dimensional round carving and plane carving. Each of these three forms has different design ideas. Openwork is the most difficult, so it is recommended that beginners choose either three-dimensional round carving or plane carving.

1.Three-dimensional round carving

First of all, we need to draw the plan of the wood carving according to our own ideas, and then deepen the details. Because the round carving is a three-dimensional shape, although we draw a plan, but we need to build a three-dimensional drawing in our mind, in the draft drawing to mark out which areas need to be reserved for how much size.

2. Plane engraving

Plane engraving is mainly in a fixed size plate, according to the drawing of the pattern for carving can be, is the most simple, the most suitable for beginners of the engraving process. So in the sketch only need to mark out the size of the plate and depict the pattern you want to carve can be.

Step 3: Selection of materials

1. Material:

 beginners choose softwood, such as basswood, pine, poplar and other wood easy to carve. Remember not to choose hardwood for the first time, the material is too hard for beginners to carry out carving is easy to appear hand injury accident.

2. Shape and size: 

according to the draft map marking the size of the wood to choose to meet the requirements. If it is a flat carving, find the right size can be: if it is a round wood carving, you can go to look for some unique shapes of wood, such as a long strip of wood with forked branches to carve a long ribbon fish.

3. Appearance: 

there should be no obvious cracks and scars on the wood, otherwise the wood carving may have irreparable flaws after completion.

Step 4: Base shape

Roughly remove the excess wood from the wood by chiseling and cutting. After removing most of the wood, use tools to sand the rough basic shape according to the draft. During the sanding process, the volume of each part of the wood should be left to allow some room for the rough carving later.

Step 5: Rough and fine carving

The basic shape of the wood carving work is completed, and then you need to take out the ready carving tools, in the wood carving was deliberately left on the margin area for processing. Fine carving requires beginners to work on the fine details of the work to modify and carve, according to their own ideas to optimize the carving of the details of the part. Rough carving requires the beginner to continue shaping the overall shape of the wood carving with a wider carving knife.

Step 6: Polishing

After the carving work is completed, the overall work will have angular carving marks. If you want to preserve the original carving marks and give the carving a more natural look, you can skip this step and go straight to coloring the wood carving wax. If you want the overall appearance of the piece to be smooth and have a flowing aesthetic, you will need to sand it. Use sandpaper to sand the edges and corners, and then use a brush to clean up the wood shavings after the sanding is completed, and the overall carving of the wood carving is finished.

Step 7: Post-treatment (waxing)

After cleaning up the wood carving and making sure there is no debris on its surface, you can start the final waxing work. If you like the original color of the wood carving, you can use wood dye to highlight the wood grain of the wood carving and show the natural original color. If you like colorful wood carvings with rich visual effects, you can use acrylic paints to color the wood carvings, which will have a good decorative effect. Finally, oil wax, varnish and other paints are applied to create a protective layer for the wood carving.

Conclusion

By following the steps in this guide, beginners can quickly learn how to carve a wood carving craft and know the details and safe practices to pay attention to in each step. Beginners, go to choose a few suitable carving tools and start carving your first wood carving crafts, which will be a very interesting and fulfilling thing for you.

Rainbow Sorting Sensory Bin

 This rainbow sorting bin is so much fun for little ones. It has a variety of textures, shapes and colors for sorting on a rainy day, or anytime! This is perfect for kids who are learning colors, or just need some busy work!

My daughter loves rainbows, and she loves busy work, so this rainbow sorting bin was the perfect rainy day activity for her. We had dyed oats in our craft supplies, and with that, an idea was born to make this activity. Dying oats is so easy, and they are awesome to play with. 

I grabbed a 3 pack of mini pots at the dollar store  and painted them with Kwik Stix but you could use any type of small container, like a baby food jar, a food storage container or whatever for this bin. you just need something that your toddler or preschooler can place the beads in.

Supplies:

Dyed Oats  * instructions here*

Small containers

A plastic storage bin with a lid

Clothespins

Small spoons

Foam beads

Buttons or larger beads

After dying your oatmeal start layering it into the storage bin.

Place the pots or containers for sorting into the bin.

Add beads to the bin, or buttons. I like to offer a variety of textures in the beads. This bin has foam, wooden and standard crafting beads in it.

Add a few small spoons, clothespins and other items for sorting, pinching and measuring. Tongs and slotted spoons are great additions!

I added a clear plastic ornament to the bin too because I wanted to challenge Harper to place the items in a smaller opening.

Offer your child the bin. Ask your child to identify colors as they are picking them up. Encourage your child to sort the colors. This bin is fun to play in, and it is visually appealing too. The variety of textures is engaging. The use of clothespins and or tongs uses the small muscles of the hand. 

This bin has so many developmental benefits and it is a lot of fun too!

Harper loved this bin. She is a big fan of rainbows and busy work, so this rainbow sorting bin engaged her for a while on a rainy afternoon. When she was finished we snapped the lid on the storage bin and stashed it away for another day.

You can find more sensory play ideas here

Rainbow Disc Bag

Rainbow Rice Sensory Bin