5 Easy DIY Christmas Ornaments

Christmas will be here soon, and at Ace Paint and Unfinished Furniture, we want all our crafty customers to have an outlet for their creative energies! That's why we're posting this article about creative and easy DIY ornaments. These Christmas ornaments make great gifts for neighbors and friends, and even make great decorations to attach to Christmas packages under the tree!

For this project, you'll need solid colored ball ornaments, brown paint, red paint and a black permanent marker. Paint your thumb brown, then make a thumb print on the ornament. This thumb print will serve as the face of the reindeer. When the thumbprint has been painted onto the ornament and has dried, use the black marker to draw antlers and eyes onto the face. Finally, apply a dab of red paint onto the face in the location of the nose. Voila! You should have an adorable painting of a reindeer. You can see a sample of this ornament on this blog.

This classic ornament is very flexible in design and application. Simply bend a pipe cleaner in the shape of a holiday-related object such as a Christmas tree or a candy cane. Then, string the pipe cleaner with colorful beads and tie off the ends so that the beads stay on the pipe cleaner. This is a great project to work on with children over a rainy day because it requires only two types of material (pipe cleaner and beads) and doesn't take long to complete.

Peanut snowmen are adorable! Paint a peanut shell white, then imagine this is the body of your snowman. When the paint is dry, hold the peanut shell vertically so the thickest part of the shell (the body) is on the bottom and the narrow part of the shell (the head) is on the top. Use a black marker to make dots for eyes and mouth, then glue on accessories as you see fit. Consider using a piece of yarn for a scarf, a hat made of felt, and so on.

Cut out two Christmas trees of green felt. The Christmas trees should be the same shape and size. Sew the trees together with embroidery floss and stuff the space between the trees with something slightly poofy, like facial tissue or cotton. Finally, sew colorful buttons on the Christmas tree to represent ornaments. You can seen an example of this craft project (and several other felt ornament projects) here.

Wrap an old, used shower curtain ring in sparkly green pipe cleaner or in yarn. Do this so the ring is completely covered and appears to be a tiny wreath. Next, glue little fake berries and ribbons to the wreath to decorate it. Tie a red ribbon string around the top of the wreath to hang it from your tree.

We picked these crafts specifically because many of them can be completed with items you probably have in your own home. Of course, if you need some paint or craft ideas, we hope you'll stop by Ace Paint and Unfinished Furniture. We'll be happy to act as a sounding board and help you find anything in our inventory that may be of help.