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Christmas Tree Crafts
Make your own Christmas tree crafts and create a one-of-a-kind Christmas tree this year.
Christmas tree crafts come in all shapes and sizes, and they range from the old-fashioned (see above) to the newfangled (see further down), from the easy-to-make to the utterly elaborate.
But they have one thing in common: You can always make your own, truly unique version of them.
Depending on the kind of Christmas mood you want to achieve for your home -
and your tastes and the interior style of your house - your Christmas tree could look elegant, rustic, retro, or funky.
You could, for example, decorate your tree with ...
- 3d paper crafts (like origami folded stars – they look particularly good if you make them out of really exquisite paper)
- delicate ornaments made of white or gold-colored bobbin lace
- tiny old-fashioned (wood or tin) toys
- adapted things from nature, for example, painted and varnished fir cones in gorgeous colors
- textile Christmas tree decorations, for example little felt shapes embellished with cross-stitch
- other country style Christmas tree crafts (handmade from natural materials like straw, raffia, or wood)
- edible Christmas crafts (more on that further down on this page!)
- or home-made Christmas baubles (in the USA they're 'Christmas balls') -
here's how to make them!
Below are some free ideas for Christmas tree crafts that - are easy to make
- look great.
Apples & Nuts
This is the most historical way of Christmas tree decorating (we’re talking 16th century Alsace, Germany and Switzerland). And that's the beauty of it ... to know that your tree decoration goes back to such an old time and tradition.
For apples, if you can get the small, red-cheeked kind that mature late in the year, they’re the best ones to hang in Christmas trees.
 In rich households, the nuts were sometimes gilded. It helped reflect both the candlelight and the owners' wealth, and definitely added to the Christmas splendor.
You can easily create the same effect with gold paint. I think it looks particularly good if only some of the nuts are painted gold and the others are left in their natural colors.
Here's how to make a wire construction to hang them up:
 (1) Cut a little notch into the bottom, or crack the two halves open just a fraction at the lower tip, and wedge the wire into the notch (the way I’ve done here).
Then (2) pull the wire up along the ‘seams’ and lock it tight at the top.
 Finally, (3) create an eyelet by winding a strand of the wire around the end of a pencil or knitting needle. Secure and cut the leftover bits off.
Alternatively, just glue a little loop or metal ring to the top. That should work, too – a nut isn’t exactly a heavy load!
Cookies & Sweets
When the custom of decorating an evergreen tree for Christmas started spreading around Europe in the 19th century, sweets and cookies were highly favored Christmas tree ornaments.
And nowadays you don’t even need to bake any cookies if you don’t want to. Just buy plain cookies in nice shapes (hearts, stars, rocking horses…) and customize them.
 Make sure the cookies you buy all have somewhere to pull a ribbon through, before you start turning them into your own unique and special Christmas tree crafts.
On the other hand, you don’t really need to hang them into the tree, either. If they're small enough they’ll look pretty just sitting in the branches.
Customize your cookies with - almond halves, dried/candied fruit or colorful little sweets - ‘glue’ them onto the cookie with a mix of confectioners’ (icing) sugar and water. Or use
- (colored) icing to paint the cookies, or take
- candy writers to embellish the plain cookie shapes.
If you want to keep them looking like traditional Christmas tree crafts, use only natural colors for this - brown cookies, red dried fruits, white icing sugar. It looks great if you also hang them on red ribbon, and/or put some lush red bows into the tree as well.
For a real ‘country’ Christmas tree, mix your customized cookies with apples and nuts, and add rustic Christmas tree crafts made of wood or straw.
 Christmas Baubles
Somehow Christmas balls have become the quintessential Christmas tree crafts.
Real glass baubles have to be made by expert craftspeople, but there are hundreds of other ways to make beautiful (non-glass) Christmas tree balls yourself ... mine are made of styrofoam, paper, and beads -
click here for the 'recipe'!
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Christmas paper crafts: lovely, inexpensive holiday craft gifts that are easy to send in the post
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