Holiday Crafts

I love to be crafty and I had so many ideas of different things I was going to make for Christmas and winter, but time just got away from me. I did manage to make three small crafts for the holidays. The first one I mentioned in the post about our elf Jingle. It was the mini felt Christmas Tree I had him bring Ella one morning. I originally got the idea for this back in October and I did end up making a jack-o-lantern one, but I never did get around to posting about that either.

For the mini Christmas Tree I cut out the shape of a tree from the side of one of Ella's diaper boxes. (Unfortunately potty training took a bit of a backseat when little Miss Ella decided she was no longer interested. We have in the past week started up again so hopefully she can stick with it a bit longer this time).

 After cutting out the box shape I used that as a pattern for cutting out the green felt. I then glued the felt to the box and BAM...an instant felt tree. Using some scarp pieces of felt I had I cut out little ornaments so Ella could decorate and undecorate the tree over and over again. 

 My original plan was to have pairs of matching shapes so we could practice shape names, but I couldn't make enough shapes to really decorate the tree, so I added in some others and a star for the top. Ella really enjoyed playing with it and it's still gong strong well into January 2013!

 My second craft project came to me after we ended up cutting the bottom of our Christmas tree off in order to fit it in the apartment. I actually made this same craft last Christmas In Holland but used the pine tree branches and real berries I found on one of the paths we use to walk the dogs around.

I had the square vases (which I use a ton for many different purposes) left over from the centerpieces at our wedding. I cut small pieces of pine branches to fit the height I wanted in the vases and then added the berries. I had to buy fake ones from Michael's but they were on clearance and I figure I can use them year after year.

These were super easy to make and took no time at all. I love that they work for Christmas and all of January as a decoration. I even added one to our hall bathroom to spice it up a bit.

My final project had to do with our ornaments that we have for the tree each year. I had Ella's ordered and was incredibly happy with how it turned out. All I had to do for it was send a profile picture of her to the designer and I am amazed at how much it looks like her. (this is a bit off track with my post but I just had to share)

Anyway, my crafty ornament that involved Ella was a salt dough handprint. I found a salt dough recipe online (they are all about the same so if you're interested just google it).

After the dough was made, Ella had fun pushing her hands into the dough, they baked and dried for close to two days, they looked like this:

It was a bit too plain for my taste, so back to Michaels I went for some white acrylic paint, red glitter paint and Mod Podge. I read that sealing the ornament with the Mod Podge would help it to last longer. I missed the step of sealing it before painting and only sealed it after, but it helped to make the dough ornament much stronger. I tied a festive piece of ribbon on it, wrote her name and date on the back and when Ella sees it on our tree she says Ella's hand is waaaaay up high!