Homemade Christmas ornaments are a great way to make your Christmas personal and special. Whether you spend an afternoon shaking glitter on things with your kids, or take some time out for yourself to be creative, you can craft some beautiful Christmas decorations which you will enjoy for a long time to come.

For this quick Christmas DIY I’ve put together a selection of ornaments, decorations and craft ideas which you can do on a budget. Here we have four different ideas you can carry out with just a few select resources, most of which you may already have around the house.


You will need:
Paper doilies
Scissors
Glue
Sellotape
Needle and thread
Blank cards
And if you have stamps, ink, glitter etc then those are handy to have too

 
1 – Homemade Christmas Ornaments – to hang on the tree


This pretty little bauble is simple to make with just a little bit of time and care.

First cut the centre out of your doily to leave a lacy ‘frame’. Try not to cut the lacy section at all. I folded mine in half to do it. Leave a small section of middle still attached to the doily edge when cutting.

Take the needle and thread and loop the thread over to double it. Tie a knot and push the needle through the centre edge of the doily frame. You then need to do a running stitch all around the middle of your doily frame, pulling the thread and ruching the paper as you go. A running stitch is the simple in/out stitch, nothing fancy.

As you sew & gather the paper the doily should start to curl up. When it is all ruched together it will curl up into a rough ball shape. Push your needle through the centre and use the left over thread to create a loop for your bauble.

Done!


2 – Doily Snow – for your walls or window


This must be the easiest craft to make using doilies.

The trick is to have different sizes of cups, glasses and egg cups to draw around to make ‘snowflakes’ of different sizes. Position your cup half on the lacy edge and half on the centre, this gives an interesting textured finish. Cut out your snowflakes and stick them up with double sided sticky tape, bluetac or looped round sellotape.

Try not to position them too perfectly – they look better with a slightly random spread.


3 – Fairy lights with doily decorations – ideal if you don’t have a tree


This little DIY takes only moments to complete and gives very effective results. I had oval shaped doilies to work with, so if yours are round then it may take a little experimentation to get the right shape. All I did was create cones to slip over my fairy light bulbs to create a prettier, more decorative appearance for our Christmas lights.

To make the large cone I cut the doily in half, looped it to tape the straight edges together (with a little bit of overlap). I made sure to leave a little hole at the pointy end so that I could poke the fairy light bulb through there. The smaller version was a ¼ of the doily taped together in the same way. Then just slip them over the light bulbs in random size order.



4 – Christmas cards made with doilies – to send to loved ones

Brown kraft paper cards are ideal for use with doilies as they are a great backdrop to the pretty doily lace pattern.


I used the leftover bits and pieces of doilies from the various projects to make these cards. I had a leftover snowflake which became a bauble with a little bit of string added. Then a few pieces of doily become a pretty snow covered forest, with a single decorated tree in the centre.

You could let your imagination run wild and create snowflakes, hills, Christmas puddings, holly, snowmen and maybe even Santa. There’s a lot you can do with this pretty white paper.



So there you have four ideas for homemade Christmas ornaments all made using the humble paper doily. So which is your favourite? Can you think of any more ideas to try out?

Leave me a comment and let me know!

Becky