What ideas would you add to an advent calendar?
Christmas
Pony Bead and Salt Dough Ornaments
I love playing around with salt dough. It’s a great sensory experience, plus you can create and keep your masterpieces.
With this project, we tried two new things. We colored the salt dough before creating and added pony beads to decorate our designs. The resulting pony bead and salt dough ornaments were so pretty!
Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details. The pony beads were provided to us by CraftProjectIdeas.com. All ideas are my own.
The first step in the process is making your salt dough.
We use a very simple recipe that your kids can make themselves.
Colored Salt Dough
1 c flour
1 c salt
1/2 c water
Several drops of food coloring
Mix the flour and salt together.
Add your food coloring to your water until your have your desired hue. Then, add the water to the flour and salt mixture.
Mix together until combined. Dig in with your fingers to help mix.
Once it’s thoroughly mixed, remove your dough from the bowl and start kneading until it’s pliable and no longer sticky.
You can knead in additional flour, one teaspoon full at a time, if your dough is too sticky. Just be careful and don’t add too much. Your dough can get crumbly very quickly if you add too much!
This makes about 2 cups worth of salt dough, which is enough for several children.
I cut the original recipe in half and made two batches of the half recipe, equivalent to one whole batch. I did two half recipes so each girl could have a different color of dough. Luckily, this recipe cuts in half very easily.
Make your salt dough ornaments
Once your dough is ready to work with (and your kids are through playing with it), grab some cookie cutters and a rolling pin.
Roll the dough out to about a 1/4-inch thick and cut designs with your cookie cutters.
Use a drinking straw to make a hole in the top so that you can string a ribbon through later. I’ve tried several methods for making a hole and have found that a drinking straw works best.
Add your pony beads
Next, get creative with your pony beads.
Squish the beads into the dough, but be careful not to push them all the way through.
Use as many or as few as you like.
We only had a package of white beads, but multi-colored beads would also be pretty.
Harden and dry your ornaments
Once your ornaments are complete, place them on a foil-lined baking sheet.
You can leave them sitting on the baking sheet to dry (which can take a couple of days). So, to speed up the drying process, you can put them in the oven at the lowest setting for awhile. I baked ours for 1 and 1/2 hours at 250 degrees.
After baking, your ornaments may still not be completely dry. I always have to flip our ornaments over after they are done baking and let the bottom side dry. I usually leave them out overnight to finish drying.
Once they are dry, add some ribbon and hang them up! You can string several on one length of ribbon to create a bunting, or you can hang them on a few bare branches to create a decorative tree. Or, make ornaments to hang on your Christmas tree.
These pony bead and salt dough ornaments are so pretty no matter what you do with them. Have fun and get crafting with salt dough!
You may also like on of these kids crafts:
Craft Stick Frames: Classic Craft for Kids
Colored Salt Dough Leaf Impressions at The Imagination Tree
Are you looking for more art projects?
Check out Three to Five: Playful Preschool. Get over 25 activities, 10 printables, and links to even more play-based preschool activities in this fantastic e-book. Purchase it here.
Christmas Bells
After the Great Silver Bell Debacle of 2013, I decided to add in a bit a simplicity to our holiday crafting.
I still wanted to make bells, but this time no aluminum foil was allowed. (Read this post to find out why.)
Instead, I got out the paper and the paints and let my 4-year-old call the shots.
Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.
I cut out a few bells shapes from white construction paper and Miss Preschool started painting.
Instead of painting designs, she opted for all one color. That’s because she had something else in mind to jazz them up.
We had painstakingly selected all of these beads to embellish our silver bells.
They were still calling our name.
We had to use them.
Miss Preschool got out the glue and started adding beads, each one hand selected for that particular bell.
She didn’t add too many. She likes to keep things simple.
When they were done, they were beautiful.
We punched holes in the top of each bell and tied them all together with yarn.
Miss Preschool hung them with pride on the tree. That picture at the top, she took that one herself. She wanted a few pictures of her bells.
Keep it simple. Yes, that’s what I needed to learn and I had to learn that lesson from a pile of foil bits.
Joy To the World Christmas Ornaments
I always have Christmas music playing in December.
Always.
Which is why I decided to use Christmas carols as a loose theme for our craft projects this holiday season.
One of my favorite carols is Joy To the World, especially when it’s sung by a full choir. (Here’s a lovely version if you want to take a listen.)
We took a little DIY Mod Podge (decoupage medium), a world map, and some cardboard to make these fun and sparkly reminders of the song.
Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.
Supplies Needed:
Homemade glitter Mod Podge (see below for instructions)
Paint brushes
Thin cardboard (cereal or cracker boxes work best)
World map (recycle one you own or print a new one)
Glitter
Permanent markers
String for hanging
DIY Mod Podge:
Glue
Water
Iridescent glitter
You’ll want to begin with a map.
We used colored pencils to color in an old outline map I had. You can use any map you might have, a state or city map would also world for this project.
If you don’t have a map you can cut up, National Geographic Education has an online map maker that you can use to create and print a world map.
Cut a rectangle from both your cardboard and your map of equal sizes.
DIY Glitter Mod Podge (decoupage medium): To make your decoupage medium, you will need one part glue to one part water. I mixed the two up in a small container with a tight fitting lid. Add the two ingredients together and shake until they combine. Then, add a generous amount of glitter to the mixture and shake again. I used the iridescent glitter from CraftProjectIdeas.com. Add a lot of glitter to your mixture. Once it’s in the glue, it won’t scatter about your house!
Brush a coating of your decoupage medium on your cardboard and press the map down on top.
Add another layer of the decoupage medium to the top of your map. Just add a thin coating, otherwise you’ll be waiting all day for the map to dry.
We added an extra shake of glitter on top of our glue, since we didn’t think our maps were quite glittery enough.
While the maps were drying (we waited about an hour), I made a simple template for our ornaments.
I used some of the scrap cardboard and wrote the word joy in big letters. I then cut around the letters.
If you’re not feeling artsy enough to make the word art, make a simple oval template.
Once your maps have dried, trace the outline of your template onto the back of your cardboard.
Cut around your outline.
Using your marker, trace the letters onto the front of your map. If you made an oval template, simply write the word “joy” in big letters on your map.
Punch holes in both sides of your ornament and add your string.
Your glittery Joy to the World ornaments is ready to hang on your tree!
What is your favorite Christmas carol?
Pom Pom and Jingle Bell Necklaces
Everyone needs a festive necklace to wear for Christmas, right? I thought so.
That’s why we spent an afternoon making a few DIY pom pom and jingle bell necklaces.
Pom pom making is fun and it’s easy to do, even without a special pom pom maker. We don’t have one and were able to make these necklaces quite easily.
Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.
Supplies Needed:
Thin cardboard (cereal or cracker box)
Yarn
Sharp scissors
Jingle bells
Before you begin, cut a couple of strips from the cardboard. Ours were about width of three fingers, and I thought it made a nice sized pom pom.
Next, wrap the yarn around the strips. Don’t wrap too tight! We wrapped the yarn around approximately 100 times. (Extra counting practice – yahoo!)
We found that 100 times made a perfect pom pom.
Carefully slide your cardboard out of your yarn bundle. If you wrap too tight, you won’t be able to get it out.
I found that the thin cardboard worked best because we were able to bend it a bit to slide it out more easily. Lay your yarn bundle on top of another length of string.
Bring up the yarn on either side of your bundle and tie it in a tight knot. Your bundle will form this nice little ball while you’re tying.
A grown-up may want to do this part because you will need to tie this tightly. We left one of ours too loose and our pom pom eventually scattered bits of yarn all over the floor. The ones we’ve tied tightly have held together nicely.
After you’ve tied your knot, slip another length of yarn underneath the knot. This will be the necklace.
Slip your scissors through the loops and start cutting. Use sharp scissors because kid safety scissors won’t cut the yarn well. Both of my girls did their own cutting and were well supervised at the time.
After all your loops are cut, trim your ends so that your pom pom resembles a ball instead of an unruly bundle of yarn.
Be careful that you don’t trim your long pieces of the necklace. You’ll need those to tie around your neck.
Once your pom poms are trimmed to your satisfaction, string two jingle bells on each necklace. We did find this step to be a bit difficult since our jingle bells had small openings at the top. We ended up wrapping tape around one end of the yarn and using it as a makeshift needle.
Once the jingle bells are on, tie the ends of the yarn together to make your necklace.
Now, you’ve got the perfect necklace for a bit of caroling.
Jingle all the way.
Oh what fun, it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh. Hey!
Have fun making your own DIY pom pom and jingle bell necklaces for Christmas.