How to Make Animal Christmas Tree Ornaments
By making animal ornaments, you can add a dash of homemade style to your Christmas tree. Creating the ornaments is a family-friendly project that requires little money and time. With a few items including chipboard, acrylic paint and ribbon, you can make personalized animal Christmas tree ornaments that can be a part of your Christmas year after year.
Things You'll Need
- Precut animal-shaped chipboard
- Pencil
- Marker, acrylic paint or crayon
- Small paintbrush (if using paint)
- Embellishments
- Craft glue
- Tweezers
- Thin ribbon
- Tape or hole punch
Instructions
-
-
1
Purchase precut animal-shaped chipboard from a craft store. Chipboard is a thin version of cardboard that is made from mixed paper waste; the animal shapes typically come in white or beige. If you find chipboard that is not cut into animal shapes, buy animal-shaped cookie cutters from a craft store, trace them onto the chipboard and cut them out.
-
2
Draw the features onto the animal shape using a pencil. The pencil outlines, such as drawing the spots on a dog or the triangular plates on a Stegosaurus dinosaur, can serve as a guideline for where to place the decorative materials. This is especially helpful for children. Mark each spot with a number to signify which color to paint it, for example, writing the number one to correspond to yellow and the number two to correspond to black.
-
-
3
Apply the base color onto the animal shape. If you are using a marker, give it a few minutes to dry before applying any embellishments and allow at least a full day if you're using paint.
-
4
Add the embellishments onto the animal shape. Apply craft glue to the embellishment, then press it to the animal ornament and hold for a second before releasing. Use large tweezers to apply smaller items, such as googly eyes.
-
5
Make a hole in the top center of the ornament using a hole punch, insert a strip of thin ribbon through the hole, and then tie it into a loop that is large enough to fit over a Christmas tree branch. If you would rather not make a hole in the shape, tie a piece of thin ribbon into a large loop, then use transparent tape to adhere one end to the center back of the ornament. Hang the other end of the loop onto the tree branch.
-
1
Tips & Warnings
Choose a theme for your ornaments. One option is to do all of the same type of animal, for example, by creating only dog-shaped Christmas ornaments that are decorated differently from each other. Another option is to create animal ornaments by their environment, such as all water animals or all dinosaurs.
To color the ornaments, use acrylic paint, markers or crayons. For 3-D ornaments, you can use felt, googly eyes, cotton balls or mini pom-poms.
Doing 3-D ornaments may be better for older kids; younger children can better handle only coloring the ornaments with child-safe art materials.
References
- Photo Credit dog image by Ramona smiers from Fotolia.com
