Salaric

I made this Christmas mobile for my daughter’s bedroom. I used two red lolly sticks, two thin matte green pipe cleaners, one red and green metallic pipe cleaner, two red metallic pipe cleaners, one green metallic pipe cleaner, three silver pipe cleaners, two gold metallic pipe cleaners and some black cotton.

It has a Christmas tree in the middle with four stars surrounding it: two silver and two gold.

How I made the Christmas tree:

For the tree I used one dark green metallic pipe cleaner.

I bent it into a right angle about 3.5cm from one end; I then made a slightly rounder bend about 2cm away from the first bend. Then I looped the non-bent end of the pipe cleaner around the right angle to make the loop that would be the tree. I then put in another slightly rounded bend 2cm vertically to give the bottom of the tree. Then I simply bent the remaining curve in the middle to get the triangle.

I then took the metallic red pipe cleaner and looped it around one of the bottom corners of the triangle, twisting the red pipe cleaner to itself to secure it to the tree. I then brought it up in a diagonal line and looped it round the side of the tree and round the back at an angle to the other side, where I repeated the processes until I was at the top of the triangle where I looped it around itself again. I then cut off the excess red pipe cleaner. This was ‘tinsel’ for the tree.

I repeated the processes with the silver pipe cleaner, only starting from the other side of the triangle’s base. I also didn’t cut off the excess pipe cleaner and instead bent it into a five point star at the top of the tree. I had to re-bend the star to make sure I actually had enough pipe cleaner to twist onto itself to finish the star off.

I then twisted around the ‘trunk’ of the tree a big ‘knot’ of another red pipe cleaner to make a plant pot for the tree. I had to pull it around a bit to make a nice trapezium-type shape. Here is the finished tree:

Stars

Each one of the stars is made from one pipe cleaner.

First off I made a five point silver star; I found that you need to double the number of sides you actually want, then add two extra to close the loop. So for a five pointed star, I needed 12 sides. Instead of doing 11 sides I did 12 because it was easier and just ‘overlapped’ a whole point to make the five points – twisting the pipe cleaner around itself to make the star a complete loop. I began by folding the pipe cleaner into three, then folded each of those sections in half and then in half again.

I then opened the folds out and pulled it around a bit until I had a star.

For the seven pointed star I needed to have 14 sides plus an extra two sides, making 16. So I folded the pipe cleaner in half and then in half again. To make this easier I then opened it out into a sort of M shape and folded each ‘spike’ in half, giving me eight sides. I opened the pipe cleaner out into the zig zag shape and again folded each ‘spike’ in half, giving me the correct number. I then fiddled with it until I had my star.

For the six pointed star I needed 12 sides plus the extra two, making 14. This one I found more tricky and worked out by eye where to fold the pipe cleaner into seven sections, and then I folded each of them in half. Then I fiddled with it to make the star shape.

This one was really fiddly and, as you can see, I made a bit of a mistake with it. It was supposed to be an eight pointed star but I twisted the spare sides together in the way I would have done if it was going onto the top of a tree i.e. sticking out of the bottom of the star.

Frame

For the frame I was going to attach the stars and tree to, I used two red lolly sticks and the matte green thin pipe cleaners. I held the two lolly sticks in a cross and then twisted one of the pipe cleaners in an alternating figure of eight around where they overlapped. I also looped it around in a sort of square so that it had no chance of shifting from that position.

With the excess pipe cleaner, I made a loop on the top so that the mobile would hang up nicely.

I cut the other matte green pipe cleaner into four and wrapped the sections of it around the ends of each ‘arm’ of the frame as ‘stoppers’ to prevent the shapes sliding off once on the frame.

Ready for assembly

I then had the frame, four stars and a Christmas tree.

I tied cotton onto each shape and then tied the other end of the cotton onto the frame behind the pipe cleaner ‘stoppers’ so that the shapes couldn’t slide off the frame. I then attached the red and green metallic pipe cleaner to the loop on the top of the mobile and twisted another loop at the top of that, so that I could hang it up in my two year old’s room. I made the pieces of cotton different lengths because I thought it would look nicer, but with hindsight I think this might have been a mistake, as was using different numbers of points on the stars. I think just having one type of star might have been better.

I made this pom-pom holly Christmas card using:

• 3 medium red pom poms

• 3 thin dark green pipe cleaners

• 1 sheet of red card, slightly larger than A4

• scissors

• PVA white craft glue

• 1 foam three leaf holly stamp

• light green ink pad

Most of this came from The Works in Stroud.

I started by gluing the three pom poms into a triangle; these were to represent the holly berries.

I then cut about a third off of the ends of three pipe cleaners. I then bent them into the holly leaves, making sure I left enough excess to twist into a tail. 

I then turned over the berries and glued the leaves in place. This was a bit fiddly and involved having to rig up scaffolding using various boxes and rubbers I could find to stop the leaves just flopping and their ‘tails’ sticking out from the berries. I then left the whole lot to dry for several hours.

In the meantime I folded the red card in half and then in half again. I then took the foam stamp which I got as part of a set from the Pound Shop and pressed it into the light green ink. I had previously tried the dark green but it came out a sort of dark brown on the red card and just didn’t look anywhere as nice as the lighter green.

I then stamped a holly leaf triplet into each corner – I reloaded/repressed the stamp in the ink pad each time.

I then glued the pom pom and pipe cleaner holly onto the card.

I made a set of six napkin rings from the cardboard tubes from inside kitchen towels and loo rolls. This all started because my husband made a joke that I was probably going to make a Christmas tree out the loo roll centre that he was handing me to throw away. This got me thinking and I initially cut out two rough tree shapes on a ring base out of the loo roll. My original thought had been just to have two trees standing there on a snowy hillside.

However after looking at it more critically I decided to cut off the other tree and turn it into a napkin ring. This is the reason the Christmas tree napkin ring is rougher in shape than the others, also it is the only one out of the designs that isn’t centralised so that half of it comes out of the top of the ring and half out of the bottom. It was also a bit crinkled as it wasn’t supposed to actually end up as anything so I didn’t check that the tube I was using wasn’t squashed.

I coloured in the tree with glitter pens I had laying around, this included crayola ones, from the Big Box of Spooky Craft and Big Box of Christmas Craft from the works and the 3D pens from Costco. I was a bit worried about combining these different makes of glitter pens but as I had already found out that the glitter 3D pens actually tend to dry flat I thought it would be ok.

First off I put the tinsel on the tree, two diagonal lines in a pinky iridescent glitter. Then I did the baubles in red and purple glitter by just doing a blob of glitter. (Glitter pens sort of work like icing cakes). I then carefully filled in the areas around the glitter and baubles with the green glitter.

I then left it to dry.

By this point I had decided to make a set of six for Christmas dinner: one for me, one for my husband, one for our two year old, one for my brother and one each for my mum and dad. The designs I came up with were:

Five pointed star, a bell, holly with berries, bauble, santa’s hat and of course the original Christmas tree.

Once the Christmas tree had dried I patched up some areas where the green glitter and say the red bauble didn’t quite meet due to the glitter shrinking slightly on drying. I then discovered that I didn’t have a nice white or pale blue for the snow so I covered the ring around the bottom of the tree in silver glitter. I had to use two types because I ran out of the first type of silver glitter but I tried to mix them up as I went and I think it worked. I then left it to dry.

Once the base was dry I coloured in the trunk of the tree with gold glitter and left it to dry.

The five pointed silver star had to be faintly drawn first onto the loo roll. I did this by imagining a circle and drawing five spots on it. I then drew lines from each dot towards not the dot that was its immediate neighbour but the next one along (this works well when trying to do celtic knot type drawings). I did this freehand but I think it should probably be done with a compass and ruler etc… I had several attempts before I got it right which is why I did the lines faintly.

I then faintly marked where I wanted the ring to be and cut it out. Once cut out I coloured in the star with sliver glitter and left to dry.

I then coloured in the ring with a pink irridescent glitter and left it to dry.

The third shape I decided on was the bell which I again drew freehand onto the cardboard tube. I included the ‘dinger’ inside the bell and was thinking of a very 3D shape. I think this would have looked better as two smaller bells, one swinging backwards and one swinging forwards, but never mind.

Once cut out I chose what colours I was going to use. Of course gold would have been the best but I didn’t have enough of it and the silver was going to be needed for other things. So I chose pink glitter and purple glitter for the main bell, blue for the inside of the bell and the top bit of the bell where it would be attached to ropes or mounting and silver for the ‘dinger’.

I put the purple on one side in a series of almost horizontal lines to give a shading type of effect.

I then put the pink on the rest of the main bell. I should have left it to dry at this point but I didn’t. I painted on the silver ‘dinger’ and then added the blue irridescent glitter.

I then left it to dry.

It was at this point I discovered a slight problem in that some of the glitter pens were very runny and some of them on the tree, star and bell had started to run so I had to keep turning them over and propping them up to dry in different ways so that the shapes didn’t become too distorted. Also with the bell the pink and purple glitters merged and destroyed a lot of the shading effect I had been trying to achieve. Still it was rescuable.

One the bell was dry I covered the ring in a deep blue glitter and left it to dry.

The next shape I decided should be a Christmas bauble. This was mainly a circle with just the little mounting bit where you put the string or cotton through to hang it up. I also drew a little star in the middle. I again marked where the ring should go and cut it out.

I was going to make the middle a different colour in a strip but once I’d put on the blue glitter I discovered it was very runny and decided it just wouldn’t work.

I did the mounting and star in silver and the rest in a navy blue glitter (this was different to the irridescent blue I had used on the bell).

Because of how runny the blue glitter was this one needed a lot of turning as it dried and still dried lumpy, which I wasn’t pleased about.

Once it had dried I coloured the ring in a deep Christmas red glitter and waited for it to dry.

The next shape was a three leafed holly with three berries. I started off by drawing the three holly berries; I was going for a more elegant look with this one but was a bit worried that it might be too fragile. I drew a leaf coming out of each of the gaps where the berries met. I draw holly leaves by either drawing a quarter circle curve joined by a semi-circle curve and the the another quarter circle and then mirroring it or by adding in a second semi-circle for a longer leaf. This creates the spiky effect of holly quite effectively (sorry if the explanation isn’t very clear there).

I then marked on where the ring should go and cut it out The holly leaves were a bit fiddly but worked well in the end.

As tradition dictates I coloured the berries in the Christmassy red and the leaves in the green glitter. and left it to dry.

Once dry I used the new silver glitter I had found hiding to decorate the ring. Again I left it to dry and with rotating it several times so that the silver did not run too much.

The last napking ring I made was santa’s red and white bobble hat. Again I just drew the design on the toliet roll middle; I went for one with lots of fulffy rim and bobble and hand it flopped over slightly as I think this looks better than having it up in the air. I then marked on where the ring should be and cut it out.

Santa’s hat itself was the red glitter and the bobble and fluffy rim were done in silver glitter. I then left it to dry.

Once dry I did the ring in green glitter which worked really well with the red. However the nice effect of the hat being flopped was lost a bit as the glitter hid any definition, losing the 3D effect again.

If I was to do this again I would probably use loose glitter to avoid the running problem and use paints as well. If I had time I would also probably cover them all in a few layers of paper mâché to help prevent the seam of the loo roll coming through and to make them more permanent and more likely to survive more than one Christmas. If I wasn’t just restricted to what glitter I had I would also probably do things such as Christmas puddings and trumpets.

Here are all the things that our two year old daughter made at nursery for Christmas:

This little pot was her Christmas present to mummy and daddy; it’s made out of a peat pot that you would normally grow seedlings in. Around the rim there are metallic Christmas shapes of the kind you would find in table confetti like stars and bells, probably stuck there with PVA craft glue. A piece of green sugar paper has then been placed in the pot with a few chocolate coins.

This calender is now hanging up in my husband’s office. It is made out of a paper plate painted green and blue with a metallic sheen to it. The middle of the paper plate has been cut away, leaving just the rim. A photo of our little girl was cut out and laminated, then attatched to it by being sellotaped to a metallic red and green pipe cleaner which was bent into a loop and also sellotaped to the paper plate. This gave it a nice effect, as if the photo was a pendulum in a clock. They then stuck on a little tear-off calender on the bottom.

All the Christmas stuff arrived home in this snowman bag. It was made by taping two large sheets of thin purple card together along three sides to make the actual bag compartment. The handle was made of purple metallic parcel ribbon approximately 1.5cm wide, which was again sellotaped in place. The actual snowman was made of three white circles, starting with the smallest as the snowman’s head. These had been glittered and then painted over with white poster paint and glued, overlapping, onto the bag. The carrot nose was cut out of orange paper and stuck on and the blue hat was again just cut out and stuck on. Then the mouth, eyes and buttons were drawn on in thick black colouring pencil. The writing was then done in thick silver paint pens. On the back of the bag Jean had made handprints in white poster paint.

These three napkin rings are incredibly simple and I thought they were really effective. One orange and one black Christmas tree and one pinky red bell were cut out to use as decoration. Each ring was two of the decorative shapes connected at the bottom by a strip of card. They were decked out with glue and glitter – gold glitter on the black Christmas tree, white glitter on the orange tree and more gold glitter on the bell. A hole punch was used to punch through both shapes at the top and tie them together with a bow of parcel ribbon in metallic Christmassy colours. A sheet of kitchen towel was then rolled up and put them into them as napkins.

This Christmas tree was Jean’s Christmas card to use – again this is incredibly simple. A Christmas tree shape was cut out from a folded piece of card, making sure that the points of the branches weren’t cut too finely by the actual fold, so that it remained a card and not two tree shapes! With help, Jean added baubles to the tree by finger-painting with red and yellow. A red glittery pom pom was then stuck on the top.

During their Christmas party I got the scouts to make Christmas cards – I just put the equipment out which included: ink pads in green, dark green, red, cherry red, orange, yellow, navy blue, purple, black, silver and gold (all bought from The Works in Stroud for £1.45 for three colours in one box); two lots of Christmas foam stamps from The Pound Shop which included bells, reindeers, snowflakes, Santas, candy canes, robins, holly, sleighs, gingerbread men and Christmas trees; foam Christmas shapes like baubles, reindeers, trees and holly; lolly sticks in red and green; lots of pom poms and pipe cleaners in festive colours; Christmas shapes punched out of last year’s wrapping paper such as snowmen, snowflakes and presents; PVA white craft glue; glitter; goggly eyes; safety scissors; stencils of a nativity scene; metallic gel pens; ordinary colouring pens and pencils; cotton wool and card of lots of different colours and textures that they could fold up to make Christmas cards with. Here is what they produced. (We also had quiet a few younger children there as it was a party).

I made this Christmas hat with my two year old for her Christmas party at nursery. It took two paper doilys, a pair of scissors, PVA craft glue, Christmas metallic shapes, one small white and silver pom pom and some clothes pegs.

I started by cutting a hole in the centre of one doily and then cutting out most of the solid white bit of the doily, so that it only left a 1-2mm thickness of white next to the lacy edging.

The second doily I cut a line into the centre of, and then slid one side of the cut over the other to create a cone shape. I then used PVA glue to fix the edges because it takes so long to dry that I had to use pegs to hold the shape until drying was completed.

Once dry, I cut through the lacy bit around the edge of the cone at about 1.5inch intervals; I then folded these flaps outwards.

I then put lots of glue onto the flaps and put the hat rim over the top and squidged it into place.

Once this was dry and I checked it still fitted onto my daughter’s head, I let her decorate it. I put a spiral of PVA white craft glue on the hat and gave her lots of Christmassy shapes like santa, cupids blowing trumpets, a bell and a deer. She even found a small silver and white pom pom, which she stuck on!

For the pom pom snowman I used PVA glue, two white pom poms (one slightly bigger than the other), two self-adhesive goggly eyes, two black pipe cleaners (one thin and one thick and extra fluffy), a piece of black foam sheet and some scissors.

First off I glued the two pom poms together to make the head and body of the snowman, then I cut a 5cm piece of the bigger fluffy-backed pipe cleaner off and wrapped it up into a tight coil to create a cylindrical shape. I then cut a circle out of the black foam and glued the spiral of pipe cleaner onto it to create a top hat. The foam circle obviously had to be slightly bigger that the pipe cleaner coil so that the hat had a brim.

I was initially going to have an orange foam carrot for the nose, but in fact I cut it out – a little orange isosceles triangle (two equally long sides and one short side – think: carrot) – and then rounded the corners off, but when I went to stick it on, it turned Mr Snowman into a chick. My two year old called it a quack-quack which I thought was conclusive evidence that the nose really wasn’t working and did indeed look far too much like a beak. So I scrapped the nose.

I then cut off about a cm of the thin black pipe cleaner and shaped it into a gentle curve which I stuck on as the snowman’s mouth. I, of course, was impatient and hadn’t waited for the glue to dry so managed to knock off the hat in sticking the mouth on!

I was trying to work out some easy Christmas craft things for my Scouts to make, having got hold of lots of pipe cleaners, coloured lolly sticks, and pom poms in assorted Christmas colours and sizes. I decided to make a pom pom Christmas tree.

First off I selected three green pom poms, each one slightly bigger than the last, some metallic/shiny pipe cleaners to be the tinsel and star on the top of the tree and selected christmas shapes – again metallic – and the sort you would find in table conffetti, a yellow lolly stick for the trunk and also to act as the strength in the structure. As this would be a project for children I used PVA glue.

I stuck the pom poms in size order onto the lolly stick, starting with the smallest right at the top of the stick, then the medium pom pom (making sure it also touched the small pom pom), then the large one. I put glue on the stick and between the pom poms. This gave the basic shape of the tree, complete with trunk.

Now you should definitely wait for the glue to completely dry before moving onto the next stage but I got impatient and so started attaching the pipe cleaners as tinsel, resulting in the pom poms sliding around in the glue. I got round this by using the pipe cleaners to ‘hug’ the pom pom to the stick. This would have been necessary anyway in order to get the pipe cleaners to sit in a realistic way on the tree.

I also cut the pipe cleaners in half to get a manageable length of ‘tinsel’ for the tree. I fashioned one of the spare pieces of gold pipe cleaner into the star for the top of the tree by folding it into thirds (making sure there was a bit spare at one end) and then folding each of those thirds in half again. I then stretched it out into a star shape, making sure the folds were ‘sharp’, so that the star had proper points. I was aiming for a five-point star so I overlapped two of the sections and twisted them together to make a continuous shape. The spare bit came down as the piece to attach to the tree.

I then glued lots of the table confetti shapes on to the tree to be the baubles and decorations, including the silver snow flakes.

I then attatched the star but found that I should have stuck it onto the lolly stick behind the smallest green pom pom. Fortunately I had been impatient so the glue was still wet and I could still insert the star.

It is not the best thing I’ve ever produced but when thinking things up for the kids I try not to be too careful as a sort of test to see if they’ll be able to produce the same thing. I think it works as a Christmas tree and that others could probably produce a more sophisticated version, using the same materials and this simple idea.

I made these about three years ago, so apologies for them looking a bit battered! I thought people might find how I made them useful, even if I do not have step by step photographs. 🙁

The Christmas Wreath

This is currently hanging on our front door!

What I did was use a piece of metal wire I found at my uncle’s car garage/workshop place. It was basically a perfect circle and I knew instantly what it would be useful for – however, I doubt this would happen if you were looking!

So its probably best to bend a wire coathanger into a circle, or if you are feeling adventurous, use some willow whipping canes! You can also buy twig circles and stuff for this sort of thing from lots of haberdashery shops and craft shops, not to mention flower arranging places (both sick flowers and floristry).

I had two nice bunches of silk flower poinsettias, which I had picked up in a pound shop along with some nice gold and glitter acorns and twirly bits and flowers (plastic) picked up in Romford market.

I had also picked up some pine cones earlier in the year (they may even have been from the year before!) which I attached some floristry wire to.

I then took four of the poinsettias and, envisioning a square inside the circle of wire, positioned them at what would be the four corners. I twisted their wire stalks around the wire circle, then discovering I had no florestry tape, I raided our electronics book and selected the red electrical insulating tape. This I found worked really well, though only if you aren’t going to be seeing the result! I wrapped it round the wire and stalks, fixing them in place.

I then raided my mum’s leftover materials box and found some red satin back material. It had some frayed edges which I folded behind it and stuck down with more electrical tape (mum was not impressed, but then I don’t do sewing. I would advise that if you have the time and skill that you do sew it, as it will last longer!).

This was for the banner across the middle. I laid it out flat, and making sure that there was plenty of room at each end, painted ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS’ onto it. I used a gold, glittery fabric paint that I had picked up in WH Smith’s of all places!

This had to dry – it took forever!

I got impatient though and put it on the wreath – hence one of the letters is smudged! I placed the piece of material so that it was cutting the square in half, then I folded the ends over and secured them with a mix of stitching and yet more electrical tape.

I then got two of the golden glittery things with acorns and attached them either side of the banner in a similair fashion to the poinsettias. Then I attatched the pine cones in the spaces – not all of these have survived! Place them where you think it will look good. I had two between the bottom poinsettias, one between the poinsettia and golden arrangement, each side etc…

One I had all of this on, I wrapped green and red tinsel around it all and was quite chuffed with the result. I originally had a piece of wire wrapped round the top for hanging it up, but unfortunately this rusted through and it’s now just tied up on a mangy old piece of string.

The Matching Centrepiece

We have a gold pillar candle in a gold dish type of candle holder and I decided to make it Christmasy when I realised that I hadn’t even touched the second bunch of poinsettias. These ones had gold petals in the middle.

First of all, I made a metal hoop – I think this was out of some wire I pinched from the electronics bench. I bent it into shape using pliers, making sure it would fit over the candle. The making of this was pretty similiar to the wreath. I just wrapped four poinsettia flowers onto it – though I did have to trim the stalks a bit! The old electrical tape came into play!

Then between two of the flowers I put the gold acorn arrangement and then some pine cones in the other gaps. Then I wrapped silver tinsel around it.

I did find, however, that I needed to alter the postion of some of the pine cones slightly – mainly becuase they were lifting the candle holder and candle off the flate surface – never good when you think of a lighted candle!

These were quite rushed and I’m sure that time and care could make this sort of thing look professional!

I’m posting these becuase a) I’m a proud parent and b) I think some of the ideas are cool and plan to nick them for the Beavers and Cubs next year!

My baby is called Jean and is almost 16 months, so I think that she was heavily helped with these projects!

Photo rotation and spelling correction soon to follow!

This is shiny green card with Jean’s footprint as the reindeer’s face, which then has a red, glittery bobble on, stuck on as the nose, and two goggly eyes. The antlers are Jean’s handprints in gold metallic paint (I assume non-toxic!) attached with metallic, green pipe cleaners and liberal use of sellotape!

This appears to be two foam sheets cut into a bauble shape and stuck together around the green ribbon. They then stuck lots of glitter and smaller Christmas foam shapes on it – on one side an artist’s use of milk bottle tops has been made!

This is a snowman card shape with a hole punched hole and a bit of cotton that she has splashed some white and green paint on to. I think the green was an accident but you never know!

Snowflake shape cut from paper – then covered in glue and glitter.

Card bauble shape covered in glue then glitter.

Not entirely sure this Jean Angel doesn’t freak me out! It’s a cone of orange card (you make these generally by cutting out a circle and cutting a radial line, ie a cut that if a line was drawn would be the radius). Then you can slide one bit of the circle under another bit of it – fix with glue, tape or staple and you have a cone. The wings are again handprints in gold paint that are stuck on, and then a little photo of her face has been cut out to be the head. It’s sort of cut and sort of freaky – it would scare me but as I am her mother I have to think it’s sweet!