Making Christmas Decorations! ✂

It's December, and the run up to Christmas has begun! I'm sure we've all made our own decorations before (as a child at least), made of plastic ball balls and red and green glitter, or something like that. Of course, glitter, as I mentioned before in my glitter blog, is terrible for the environment, because it is microplastics and can slip through filtration systems into the sea and then be consumed by the sea creatures living there. So, there needs to be other, more eco-friendly, ways to make your own decorations!

• Find a rock and paint it!
• You could go on a walk around your neighbourhood or in a nearby park, collect some good sized pebbles or rocks and take them home. Making sure they are clean and dry, you could get some paint (if you have some, I would also recommend acrylic paint pens since they are easier to use, but don't buy them if you don't have them) and paint some festive things onto them!
• Make (inedible) salt dough ornaments!
• Making salt dough is like biscuits, but you can't eat them, they don't crumble and you can hang them on your tree! (This may be weird, but I'm pretty sure I still have one of these that I made years ago). You cut them with cookie cutters, then decorate them however you like when they are baked - however, it takes a long, long time to bake, I think. Here's a recipe: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/howto/guide/how-make-salt-dough-recipe.
• Or make paper ornaments!
• You can get your old magazines and cut out some rectangular pieces, in different sizes (maybe 10, 12, 15 and 17 cm in length, and 3 cm in width), cut out two of each size - this is to make one ornament. Take the 10cm strip, and staple the top and bottom with the 12cm strips on each side (the 12cm ones should bend) then do the same with the 15 and 17cm strips. You can punch a hole in the top and tie string or ribbon around it. 

• Create a cardboard landscape. 
• Get some cardboard (if you have some lying around, like from all those Amazon boxes!), and use a pen to draw a landscape that you like - you can get inspiration from the internet. Cut out the outline of your landscape, then fold at the corners so it will stand up. If you make a Christmas tree, cut out two tree-shapes, then make a thin slit at the bottom of one and at the top of another, and make sure the slit goes almost to the top or bottom, but not so it splits in half. Then, slide the two together, and you have a standing tree. It should look a bit like the ones on this website
  

Of course, there are a lot more things you can do, and all you need is imagination! So, instead of going and buying new things, how about you make one of these? Thank you for reading, see you next Sunday! 

Violet

         xxx