The Story
Hello friends! I love Christmas!.....What do you mean I’ve already told you? And I waffled on about it you say? Who me? Ok, so I’ll tell you something you don’t know. I don’t love Christmas pudding! I can probably blame 70’s school dinners for that. School dinners were really bad when I was growing up. Some of you may remember the song. “School dinners, school dinners, concrete chips, concrete chips..”....it doesn’t end well. At Christmas time, I have memories of a sultana-filled, custard-swamped, tepid, dome shaped desert. The building buzz of excitement that could be felt as we all queued up to collect our Christmas puddings, was definitely not down to its culinary merits, but instead was due to the anticipation of who would find the silver coins. Yes, in the 70’s, health and safety was not what it is now! The possible dangers were weighed up, considered, pondered even, and then caution was thrown to the wind!
Alas, I have digressed. I think I have conveyed my dislike of the traditional Christmas pud (I know there are variations nowadays), and the possible origins of this dislike but I am here to tell you that the image of the Christmas pudding is my favourite! Hurrah! I love the image of a plump brown pud covered with swirls of white frosting, topped off with pretty green holly and little red berries.
So for this week’s crafty project, I have made 3 different Christmas pudding decorations, using some of the methods in my last project. You can of course vary them and I have given you a few ideas at the end of each make. And just like my last project, you can also get the kids involved!
Clay Christmas Pudding Decoration
For this decoration I have used air-drying clay, which the kids love playing with and I really enjoy using. It can be rolled and shaped into all sorts of things, no oven drying is necessary and can then be painted, varnished etc. It can take about 4 or 5 days to dry once shaped so it pays to plan ahead. This clay is very reasonable and it goes a long way and is therefore a really thrifty way of making decorations and other shapes that can be given as gifts. Check out my last blog post for ideas about turning air-drying clay into necklaces, keyrings, brooches etc.
What you need is:
Air-drying clay - this one can be found online.
Non-stick craft rolling pin. I bought a small one from a kitchen shop a few years ago but you can find them online, for instance here.
Something to ensure that your rolled out clay is of a consistent thickness - I used two tiles which were about 3mm thick but you could also use small books, CDs etc.
A plastic tray
Round cookie cutters - I used two different sizes, 6cm and 5cm diameter
A skewer to make a whole in the top of the decorations so that they can be hung up
Cup of water for smoothing out the clay
Newspaper to protect your work surface
Drying racks
Paints for decorating - poster paints are fine but I used these porcelain pens because they give a really smooth, slightly shinier finish.
Glitter
Thread/string/ribbon for hanging your decs
What you do is:
Protect your work surface with the newspaper and fill a cup with water.
The clay should come with instructions of how to use it and how long it takes to dry etc. Break off a piece of clay, ensuring the rest of the clay is wrapped back up to keep moist.
Knead the clay in your hands for a minute to soften.
Put your thickness markers onto your tray making sure that they will be underneath the rolling pin and roll out the clay.
Use cookie cutters to cut the rounds out of the clay - I cut out two different sizes.
Carefully peel the shapes from the tray.
Gently make a hole in the top of the shape using a skewer. The hole needs to be large enough for ribbon/string/thread to go through. I tend to put the skewer in from both sides and wriggle it around gently, reshaping around the hole if necessary.
Dip your finger in the water and smooth out any rough edges and surfaces.
Place the shapes onto a drying rack to dry. This can take 4 to 5 days so plan ahead!
Once dry, using the brown pen, paint a curvy line about a third of the way down from the hole at the top so that the top third looks like the frosting. Because you are using white air-drying clay, the top third is already white which means it doesn’t need painting. Colour in the rest of the decoration with the brown pen and paint the sides too.
Once painted allow to dry. I added another coat of brown paint and it was at this stage when this second coat was still wet, I sprinkled over some glitter.
Now paint the holly leaves on, sprinkle on some glitter. Leave to dry. Then paint the red berries, sprinkle some more glitter! Allow to dry.
The shapes can be heat-fixed now that they are painted, but I am not sure how necessary this is for these decorations. This involves putting them in the oven - follow the instructions that come with the pens. I didn’t heat-fix mine.
Then attach ribbon, thread or string so your decoration can be hung on your tree! Stand back and admire your work!
Other Ideas for clay decorations:
If you want to branch out beyond the Christmas pud, you could use the round shapes as baubles instead or try cutting out other shapes, like gingerbread men/women, holly, Christmas trees etc and decorating them accordingly.
You could also use a cookie embossing/message stamp kit to stamp a message on the decorations. I bought such a kit from here and I haven’t stopped using it for one thing or the other.
You could also make gift tags, which can either be embossed before drying or written on with a sharpie after being painted.
Try stringing a few decorations together to make a garland.
Decoupage Christmas Pudding Decoration
Decoupage, the art of gluing and layering small pieces of paper to an object, is great fun. I showed you how in my last post where I decorated a picture frame. Here, I am decoupaging onto a craft ball to make a Christmas pudding bauble.
What you need is:
Craft baubles. I bought these 5cm diameter card baubles here. Helpfully, they already have a nice gold string attached for hanging them up.
Brown and white/cream tissue paper to make the pud
Green felt, red sequin pins/buttons/beads.
Decoupage glue/varnish - you can find this and other decoupage paraphernalia here. You could also make your own glue using PVA and water. When I have done it this way, I have mixed 2 parts glue to 1 part water.
Glitter
Paintbrushes
Scissors
Clean, empty jars to prop your baubles onto as they dry
newspaper to protect your table
What you do is:
Using a ruler, measure and draw a line about 2cm from the top of the bauble.
Cut the brown and white/cream tissue paper into small square pieces.
Starting with the brown pieces, apply some decoupage glue to a small area of the bauble with a paintbrush and cover with a small piece of tissue paper. Apply more glue, then more paper overlapping as you go.
Allow to dry in stages, resting on the opening of a jar.
To get a good covering of the brown tissue paper, repeat this process twice more if necessary.
Repeat with the white paper
Then coat with glue one final time, adding a sprinkle of glitter.
Draw and then cut out 2 holly leaves from the green felt. Put a needle into the tip of each holly leaf, pulling it all the way through.
Using a drawing pin, poke 3 holes in the top of each bauble.
Gently push a sequin pin into the hole in one of the holly leaves and then push into one of the holes in the bauble. Repeat with the second holly leaf and then push a sequin pin into the third hole creating your berries.
Instead of the previous step, you can use green felt holly leaves and little red beads for the berries, sticking these on with PVA craft glue.
Hang up on your tree and enjoy!
Other ideas for decoupage decorations:
Using the same craft balls, try decoupaging using other decorative, wrapping or specialist decoupage paper to create fun baubles. You could add buttons, glitter, sequins, ribbon, washi tape etc.
You can also buy other craft shapes to be decoupaged from the same place I bought the baubles from, for instance, diamonds. They also have polystyrene versions which can also be decoupaged.
Yarn wreath Christmas Pudding Decoration
I think these mini-wreaths are so very cute, there are so many possibilities of what you could do with them. For this decoration, I have chosen to use wool and wrap it around the wreaths, meaning no crochet or knitting is required and you can also use scraps of yarn leftover from other projects. I have definitely been inspired by blogger and crochet queen, Lucy from Attic 24. She has made some wonderful seasonal wreaths such as this beautiful winter wreath earlier this year.
What you need is:
1 x 50g ball each of brown and cream wool (acrylic will do). You will need approx 7.5m Brown and 7m cream yarn for each wreath.
Polystyrene wreaths (9cm diameter, 27cm circumference) - you can find them here.
Double-sided sticky tape.
Green felt.
Plastic sequin pins - you can find them here.
Needle
What you do is:
If you are taking the yarn from a large ball of wool, loosely measure and cut 7.5m of brown wool and 2 lots of 3.5m of cream wool.
Wrap each around your fingers to make small balls of wool. You need to do this as the larger ball will not fit through the hole in the middle of the wreath.
Make a pencil mark anywhere on the wreath. This will be the top.
Then make 2 further pencil marks on the wreath at approx 6cm either side from the first mark. These are the marks that will separate the brown and cream yarns.
At these points and approx every 1cm, place strips of double-sided sticky tape, but at this stage do not peel the tape to reveal the sticky side.
Decide which side you want to start with, for example, I started on the left and made my way round to the right. Peel the first strip of sticky tape by this mark and start to wrap the brown yarn around tightly and closely, tucking in the end of the yarn.
Peel off the sticky tape as you go round and when you reach the second pencil mark, stop and tuck the end of the yarn in. At points as you go round, you will have to overlap the yarn on the inside of the wreath.
With the cream wool, you have cut two lengths. Start with one length and do the same as the brown wool, starting from the place where the brown wool stops up to the top pencil mark. You should have some yarn left. Do the same with the next length of cream wool, meeting the other at the top.
Tie a knot to join the 2 ends of cream wool that are left over against the wreath and a further knot in the top of the ends, making a loop. Cut off any spare wool.
Cut out 2 small holly leaves from the green felt.
Using a needle make a hole in the tip of each holly leaf, pulling the needle all the way through.
Attach the holly leaves to the wreath by pushing a plastic sequin pin through the hole you have made in each one and then piercing the wreath until secure. Add one more sequin pin in the middle so you have 3 in total.
Your yarn wreath is finished. Hang up on the tree, on doors, on the wall and enjoy!
Other ideas for yarn wreaths:
Using craft glue, you could stick on the felt and red buttons or beads instead of using the plastic sequin pins. You could also snip the loose ends of wool and using a needle and gold thread, make a loop to hang your decoration.
Cut out more holly and other shapes of leaves and pin these all the way round to make more of a traditional looking wreath.
Try wrapping scraps of yarn you may have in your stash and gluing or pinning on sequins, buttons etc.
And there you have it! A few ideas of how to make your own Christmas decorations with no sewing, knitting or crochet involved. So bring me your figgy puddings.....decorations not the real thing of course! If you have a go at these or variations of the decs in my post, I would love to know what you make and how you get on! We are on instagram, pinterest and facebook and you can be updated as soon as we post using Feedly and Bloglovin' too!
Take Care my lovelies! Until next time,
Lucy xx
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