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I do love Christmas crafting. At this hectic time of year, it’s so lovely to spend some calm time with the kids, creating crafty masterpieces to add to our growing collection of homemade christmas ornaments.
How do you make homemade ornaments?
We’ve already made some cute pom pom pine cones and mini christmas trees, and I love these DIY scandi Christmas baubles. Our latest fun project is DIY Christmas ornaments made from baking soda dough.
Easy DIY Christmas decorations: how to make baking soda dough ornaments
These homemade Christmas ornaments were simple and fun to make, and it’s easy to adapt them to suit the equipment and craft supplies you have. Here’s how we did it.
Baking soda dough recipe
Start off by making the baking soda dough. You will need:
120g (1 cup) bicarbonate of soda (*baking soda)
60g (1/2 cup) cornflour (*corn starch)
170ml (3/4 cup) warm water
Mix the bicarbonate of soda / baking soda and cornflour / corn starch together in a saucepan. Then add the warm water and stir until it’s well mixed and there are no lumps.
Put the pan over a medium heat, and keep stirring until it starts to bubble. It will gradually dry and turn to a dough consistency. When it looks a bit like play dough, take it off the heat and allow it to cool.
Once the dough has cooled, knead it on a board for a couple of minutes so that it becomes soft and workable. It’s a good idea to sprinkle a little cornflour on the board first, to stop it sticking.
Roll out the dough to about half a centimetre thick; don’t go too thin as it will break up easily, like ours did in the corner.
Shaping and decorating your baking soda dough
Once your dough is rolled out, you’re ready to stamp out your christmas shapes. We used standard *cookie cutters.
Don’t forget to poke a hole through the dough on each shape, so that you can thread them with string and hang them up. A wooden skewer will do the job easily.
You can leave the surface of each shape smooth, or add some texture with patterned stamps. I somehow forgot to take a picture of this part – the kids were really excited and we all got a bit carried away!
Pop your shapes onto a foil-lined baking tray and bake at 100℃ for 1 hour. Once your shapes have cooled down, you can get busy with the decorations.
The kids had lots of fun with glitter glue, *gems and sequins.
The last job is to thread some *pretty string through your decorations, and you’re ready to hang them!
More ideas for DIY Christmas decorations
We made little dough nose shapes for these snowmen, then glued them on and painted the features.
I couldn’t resist a bit of grown-up crafting too, and used my festive stamps to create an embossed effect. I had to give the stamps a really good clean first!
A toothpick was perfect for creating the little holes around the edge of this star.
What do you think of our handmade Christmas ornaments? I love the fact that the kids could get really hands-on with most of the stages, and it was great to be able to get creative with my own decorations at the same time. I can’t wait to add our new homemade crafts to the Christmas tree this year 🙂
DIY Christmas ornaments as gifts
As well as being a fun Christmas craft, it’s lovely to give DIY Christmas ornaments as gifts. I think they’d be particularly great as presents for grandparents. You could even personalise them like we’ve done with these fingerprint reindeer – ours were a big hit on Christmas morning!
More Christmas family fun
If you’d like to get everyone out in the fresh air to let off some steam, check out my free printable Christmas nature scavenger hunt. It’s a low-effort way to spend some time together – and it’s a family Christmas activity that doesn’t cost a penny!
Have you been making your own DIY Christmas decorations?
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