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Make your own Christmas baubles

0ctavias0fferings by 0ctavias0fferings
Last updated: 01/15/2012

Easy and quick to make tree decorations

If you're going to have a Christmas Tree in your sitting room then you'll already have some idea of how expensive a real tree can be to buy and artificial trees can be extremely expensive too, however, the greatest part of the cost of a Christmas Tree is usually the decorations which adorn its branches.

Here you'll find some ideas and examples of ways to decorate your tree for (next to) nothing. All it takes is a little effort and a dip into the rag bag for some bits to recycle.

Most of these ideas and examples are suitable for children to make with just a little supervision and they will love seeing their creations hanging on the branches of that special tree over the festive period.

What you will need

- time to raid the cupboards and oddment bags

Gather together a variety of scraps of fabric, some threads and sewing needles, glue (PVA should do the job) scissors, glitter, sequins or any other glittery oddments you can find. Some card could come in useful, old table tennis balls, hair grips, bits of broken jewellery, lace and other trimmings, in fact, any odd bits and pieces you have lying around.

Ideally, you want the fabric, and everything else, to be as lightweight as possible.

You don't necessarily need everything on the list, whatever pieces you have will do.

There are some considerations over safety to be taken into account. Home made decorations of the types shown here should NOT be used on a tree lit with real candles. In any case, real candles on a Christmas Tree - bad idea all round, fir and pine trees are highly flammable, you really should never put lighted candles anywhere near them.

Always supervise children when they are using scissors etc.

Little Angels

use - fabrics, card, lace, stuffing, needle and thread, scissors

Sometimes you come across something which sets you off on an unexpected course and this is one of those stories.

I'm rather partial to a bit of Scottish Tablet. If you've never tried it and you're the sort of person who worries about their weight then you should probably give it a miss. It's very sweet, the nectar of the Gods has nothing on Scottish Tablet, and I've reached an age where my waistline is of less importance than it might once have been.



The packets of this tablet have an interesting little feature. The bottom of each is maintained in a flat position by a piece of card glued in place and the card is a shiny silver on one side. Being that kind of person, I thought - there has to be a use for this - and so the angel's halos and wings came about. That's what started this lens on its way.



Of course, I then had to invent the rest of the angels to go with the wings.

I found I had an old blouse in a gold-ish colour, being a simulated silk, this was perfect for my purpose and I found a plate approximately 8 inches (20.5 cms) in diameter to use as a template to cut out my angels.

I cut three circles of the fabric for the three angels I wanted on the tree, then, by folding each in half and then in half again, found the centre of each circle.



Into this centre spot I then placed a small piece of stuffing. I used a little ball of clean kitchen towel, cotton wool would do just as well. Aim to make the head (because that's what it is) a little larger than a small marble.



Now gather the fabric around that ball of stuffing (keeping the ball in the middle of the fabric) and tie it off with string. This forms the "neck" and secures the head in place.
I was very fortunate in the the blouse I was cutting up had a thin belt and so I used it not only to tie off the head, but also to form a pair of arms. You could equally do this by stitching tubes of the fabric you are using or by using felt to make the arms, attaching them close to the neck.



I then cut small pieces of lace to stitch around the necks of the angels, gathering the lace onto a piece of thread to give it form. I cut small pieces of plain card to make the song sheets (you can write your favourite Christmas Carol on these), turned back the ends of the "arms" of the angels and with a simple two stitch cross stitch, sewed the "hands" to the song sheets.



The wings and halo are also secured with a couple of stitches of thread, the hanging cord is then attached halfway up the back of the halo, where I also stitched the halo to the back of the head.

The positioning of the wings is simply a matter of judgement. If you have secured a pair of arms then you will already have recognisable "shoulders" behind which you would attach each wing.

I have not put a face on these angels but it would be very simple to do with a felt tip pen or coloured pencil. Try it out on a spare piece of the same fabric in case the felt tip colour runs. Watercolour pencils, if you have them, will probably give the best result, my method would be to lick the business end of the pencil and apply the colour in a spot.


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Ping-pong Baubles

- use thin cord, wool or string, glitter and glue

This is a way to recycle old table tennis balls, it's quick, simple and easy to do, and most of the process can be carried out by children. You can recycle used ping pong balls even if they are slightly dented but the first process in the preparation must be carried out by an adult.

Take a large needle (I use a furnishing needle), failing all else, a small knitting needle will do the job, heat the end until it's good and hot, then pierce the ping pong ball in one place. You'll need to use a pair of pliers to hold the needle in the heat and to pierce the ball, I don't want to be responsible for singed fingers.

Once you have pierced the ball, you can probably push out any minor dents by working gently around the inside of the ball through the hole you created - but not with the hot needle.

The first step in decorating these balls is to fix in a loop by which you can hang the baubles. Cut your cord, wool or string into approximately 9 inch to 12 inch lengths, depending on how low you want the baubles to hang from the tree. You will lose up to a couple of inches of length when you knot together the two ends of your cord or string and push the knot through the hole in the ball. This should then be glued in place. For a more permanent loop, you could instead glue in a kirby grip so that the looped end protrudes far enough from the hole to enable you to slide a thread or thin string through for hanging the bauble.

Now you can decorate the ball with glitter. This can be messy.

If the ball is particularly smooth you may need to roughen the surface with fine sandpaper before pasting with glue. Coat the outside of the ball evenly with glue and roll it around in a dish of glitter until it's completely covered, then hang it up to dry. You may have to repeat the process once dry to get complete coverage.



If you have more than one colour of glitter you can get really artistic by drawing a face (Santa perhaps) on the ball with a blunted cocktail stick dipped in the glue before applying one colour, once that has dried, coat the rest of the ball with glue and roll it in a contrasting colour to make your design stand out.

Children can write their names or their initials in glue or decorate them with stars, sequins, whatever shiny objects take their fancy. If you have broken jewellery around, you could make yourself an imitation Fabergé ping pong bauble by giving it a background coating of gold or silver glitter with jewels glued over the top of that. Let your imagination run wild.



This ball has been punctured several times to make it possible to set in various "gems".



After setting in the "gems", the background can be coated with glue and then glitter applied. Because I used an orange ping pong ball, when the light shines through these "gems" they show as orange tinged. You can probably see this in the photos of decorations on the tree.

Saving your glitter

When I work with small glitter, I first take a clean A4 sheet of paper and fold it across the centre.

A plain white sheet of paper I find is the best background to work on and, because of the fold, it's very easy to decant the unused glitter back into the little tube it comes in.

By saving the spare glitter after you have sprinkled the object you are making, you'll find the glitter goes much, much further.

Ideally, you want an assistant to hold the tube steady while you pour but if you don't have an assistant at hand, make sure you place a second clean sheet of A4 paper under the tube while you refill it.

I knocked mine over twice while I was decanting the glitter but that second sheet of paper saved me a lot of mess and prevented any loss of glitter.

Parcels and Whirlies

- use card, small boxes, glitter, glue, scraps of shiny paper

Tiny parcels are fiddly but fun and quick to make. For the two I show here, I used a multipack for Rizla cigarette papers, cut it in half and formed each half into a small box. I happened to have some shiny, used wrapping paper which is perfect for covering these boxes and a little of the leftover fabric from the angels makes the 'ribbons' round the boxes. The hanging cord is glued into the fold of the wrapping paper at one corner, enabling the boxes to twirl in any slight breeze.



Below you can see them before wrapping.



Whirlies (you can see them hanging in the main lens picture) are so easy to make that you can easily turn out dozens and dozens of them. Simply cut a smallish circle, about 1.5 to 2 inches diameter, and draw a spiral into the centre of the circle. Cut in from the edge, following the spiral line, until you reach the centre, then, leaving a small area clear to hold it by, coat both sides of the card with glue and dip into the glitter.

If you have more than one colour of glitter you could more carefully apply the glue in a pattern and dust with one colour, allow to dry then apply glue to the rest of the spiral before coating it with a contrasting colour.

When finished, these spirals are about eight inches long.



You'll find that it helps to extend the spiral slightly before coating it in the glue but with the weight of glue and glitter it should extend itself downwards as you hang it to dry. These whirlies will twist around in the slightest breeze, giving off a wonderful sparkling effect.

Baubles from Scrap Fabrics

- use scraps of fabric, needle and thread, scissors

I had a very small piece of gold lamé fabric which wouldn't have been enough on its own to make anything but I managed to create a bauble by teaming it up with a piece of the fabric I used for the angels.

The first step is to make a small template, mine is c 3 inches long (7.75 cms) and 2 inches wide (5 cms) at its widest. Using this template, cut out the pieces you will need from whatever fabric you have. Choose lightweight fabrics so that you don't weigh down the branches on the tree too much.



After cutting all the pieces you want (four will make a slightly elongated bauble) stitch them together down one side in pairs, then match two pairs so that the colours alternate round the finished bauble, open them out and stitch these together, leaving about 1.5 inches (3.75 cms) unstitched so that you can turn the bauble inside out.

You will then want to stuff the bauble. The best stuffing is those tiny polystyrene balls you sometimes find inside small soft furnishings. We had a Winnie the Pooh chair which, when it burst, spread those little balls everywhere.

After stuffing the bauble to your satisfaction, sew up the opening and attach the hanging loop when you have stitched to the top of the opening.

If you glue together the legs of a kirby grip, you can then secure this in place as a hanging loop by pushing it inside the bauble and stitching through the protruding loop when you are completing the sewing up of the stuffing opening.



To finish off my bauble I attached a little jingle bell to the bottom. When the tree moves these give off a pleasant seasonal sound.

Other suggestions for tree decorations

Save old Christmas cards and reuse the images to make simple decorations. Cut the same size shape (star, circle, diamond shapes work well) out of the pictures on two cards and glue them together back to back, trapping a hanging cord in between them. You could apply a little glue along the outside edges and sprinkle with glitter.

Blow some eggs and decorate them in a Christmas style. Painting or spraying a clear varnish over the finished eggshell will help to preserve your painting. Those little circular protectors for hole-punched paper are excellent for applying round the hole in the top of the egg to strengthen this as all the strain is on this area when the shell is hanging. I knew an elderly Polish gentleman whose Christmas tree was covered in the most beautiful blown egg decorations, made by every member of his family.

Save or make small boxes (similar to those above) and add a little gift inside them, a charm or even just a sweet, for children who visit, they'll love being able to choose a tiny box from the tree.

Cake decorations can be reused on Christmas trees.

If you're short of tinsel, you can make your own paper chains, finer than those you would hang around the room, by cutting thin strips of gummed paper into approximately two inch lengths and looping them through each other. If you happen to have some shiny wrapping paper, you can do the same simply using a spot of glue to hold each loop. This makes a perfectly acceptable decoration on any tree.

The possibilities really are endless, experiment and enjoy.

Once you've made your decorations

... you may want to make a box to store them, I have a lens for that. You could give the exterior of the box a Christmas theme.
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