Christmas Decorations. How to Decorate a Christmas Tree. Novel Ways to trim a Christmas Tree.

Traditional trees are lovely and the reasons they are popular needs no explanation, but sometimes it is nice to have other ideas to hand for alternative ways to decorate a Christmas Tree. The ideas here are low cost and easy to make or buy and will give a unique touch to the style of your very own Christmas tree

This pages contains ideas for alternative ways to decorate Christmas trees and also ideas on how to make your own decorations and save money these ideas will also give you an original look for Christmas tree and its decorations.

Reasons to make your own home made Christmas Tree decorations:

• Save money these ideas are low cost money saving ideas
• Ideas for Novel Christmas Tree Decorations you can adapt theses ideas to suit your own taste and ideas. Making your own decorations gives your tree a unique look.
• If you wish you can make all of the decorations on a theme giving your tree a designer look.
• Making your own tree decorations sometimes ticks the frugal and the green boxes as they are not being imported and transported over long distances and use low cost items to make.

Use fabric, free clip-art or a Christmas wrapping paper with an attractive design and the images/decorations will need card behind it to back it and strengthen it.

For each decoration: You will need fabric or wrapping paper for both the front and the back, a piece of card, scissors and glue. A few sequins, feathers or ribbons might work well to add embellishments to your designs.

If using clip-art you will probably need the front and back design to be mirror-images of one another.

You can make a really simple version of this with shiny card or holographic card - either cut out two shapes and glue them together or use double sided card.

Another version is to cut out the shape apply glue then sprinkle with glitter in the color of your choice (but not a good idea with pets around or small children as the glitter may shed from the decoration).

To make the basic Christmas Decoration Design from fabric,wrapping paper or card:

You need:

Fabric or card or paper with suitable designs. Small prints work well and Christmas colors such as red and green. Backing card.

• Draw the shape of the design onto card.
• Cut out card the card shapes first

(or with clip-art glue on the design to the card and then cut around the outline of the clip-art image).

• Glue on the fabric or wrapping paper.
• Cut around the outline of the shape carefully.
• If you want to add sequins to the design applied with a dot of glue.
• When dry; make a hole in the Christmas Decoration you have made, position it carefully so that the decoration will hang nicely - and well balanced.
• Add a colorful ribbon to hang your home-made Christmas tree decoration on the tree.

This idea can be adapted to make standing card decorations or you can hang the decorations up on a mobile style display ( old wire coat hangers will work for this if painted or wrapped in foil or crossed over twigs bound together with string or twine.)

• Buy some Christmas wrapping paper that looks luxurious, gold and white or silver and white would look good; or try red paper.
• Make up some small 'fake' Christmas presents - wrap them in your luxury wrapping paper. Put neat silver and gold bows on your parcels. hang them from your tree with a delicate ribbon or string, put a silver or gold star on the top of your tree, attractive, neat and cheap Christmas tree decoration - magic.

These ballerinas would look elegant pirouetting on the Christmas tree either use them mixed and matched with other Christmas tree ornaments or have your tree a ballerina only zone.

Felt is a wonderful fabric to use for craft projects as it will not fray, it can be cut and stitched or glued and it comes in a wonderful array of colors too.

All you need to do to make decorations from felt are:

A template in the shape of the design you want to make (this is your pattern to draw around) .

Felt, needle or sewing machine to stitch with, thread, decorative pieces such as sequins, buttons etc.

If you cannot sew you can glue the felt together. 

To make a Christmas Tree Decoration from felt.

You will need to think about the size of the decoration you want to make - a small Christmas stocking is an easy starting point for this project.

1. Draw out the shape on paper and cut it out.
2. lay your template on the felt fabric and cut out two pieces. You need a front and a back piece. 
3. Slip stitch or blanket stitch around the edges - or if you prefer just work a row of neat running stitches a little way in from the edges. If you are using a machine the same applies.
4. Stitch on a ribbon loop to hang it up by, or a little brass ring will work fine. 
5. Decorate your felt shapes by adding on lace, sequins, beads,braid  etc. with a neatly applied tiny drop or two of glue.

If you want to put bows on your Christmas tree you will want them to be neatly tied and all the same size; the easiest way to do this is to tie the bows in this way.

• Work out what size bow you want the ribbon or mesh to make. This might involve making several test bows first - keep tying the test bow until you get it the size and shape you want it to be. Now you have a bow that is the right size for your tree, you just need lots of them.
• Untie the test bow, cut all the lengths of ribbon for the bows to match this length. Make up one perfect bow and then tie all the rest to match it in size and shape. you will get quicker at this after the first two or three.
• Now you need a way to attach the bows to the tree, this could be by threading wire or gift ribbon through the back of the bow to attach it to the tree, or you might want to use the hooks that are sold for attaching decorations to Christmas trees.

Try  using something imaginative and stylish to hang the baubles or decorations on your Christmas tree. If you pick the right thing to hang things up with it can be part of the theme of your tree. 

Here are some examples of things to use to hang your decorations on your tree.

Ribbons on your tree.   It has to be narrow ribbon, try using a theme like a tartan ribbon on a tree with red decorations or on a white Christmas tree. 

Or use an old fashioned ribbon like braid, it has to be narrow and soft enough to tie well.

Economy idea - use the glitzy cheap shiny gold,silver,red or white  parcel ribbon that you can buy cheaply if it is too wide it will usually split down the middle in width. But stick to one color 'ribbon' to save the tree looking as if it has been decorated with last years left overs.

An Ecco-friendly look a green idea for tying your decorations to your tree is to use garden twine made from a natural fiber such as hessian or jute. Use a green garden twine or the natural colour one.

Another one similar to the idea above is to use parcel twine in a natural fiber to hang your tree decorations up.

If you have the  time and patience you could use pipe-cleaners such as the ones you get from craft suppliers.

Whatever you use be sure to be aware that anything used for this purpose can be a danger to pets or small children if swallowed, so take care they are well out of reach ( the tree decorations and its hangers not the small child or pets).

Pick a simple cookie recipe one that bakes 'firm' biscuits that will not soften and fall apart. 

Make your cookies and also make a hole in the top of them thro' which you can thread a piece of ribbon later. Once they are baked you can hang them from a branch painted white, a ribbon wrapped hoop or even as a mobile made from two ribbon wrapped wire coat hangers tied together. These ideas, the hoop, the mobile and the branch are nice alternative to Christmas trees in smaller homes or as and extra decorative feature at Christmas time.

This idea is probably not a good one to use in a house with pets or young children, the temptation may be too great.

Salt dough is made from a few basic products it can be fashioned into many different shapes or simply rolled out and cut-out with a cookie cutter or with a knife around a template ( to get all the tree ornaments the same size and shape.

If using cookie cutters - do not use them straight onto you work top surface - remember to make them on a board the cutters will scratch the worktop surface.

even an artificial tree can benefit from a scattering of pine cones along its branches.

You can use pine cones as tree decorations as they come or paint them - white, gold or silver is very effective.

If you wish to hang them as decorations then glue on ribbon at the base of the cone with a glue gun or wire them and thread a loop of ribbon thro' the wire you have added.

A Christmas tree could look great with just pine cones, tinsel and lights.

Candy canes look really cute for tree decorations add colour co-ordinated bows on some of the branches and a  silver star or fabric covered star to top of the tree. Tartan ribbons and a tartan fabric star would look good for this idea.

Or try this idea for a small tree in a kitchen; decorate it with gold foil wrapped chocolate money coins  and gold bows.

You could buy or make gold or silver mesh bags and put sweets such as sugar almonds inside them and add bows in the same color or just the bags and matching tinsel.

Once you have learnt the basic principle experiment to produce more 'lacy designs remember no two snowflakes are meant to be identical - you can 'glam up' with touches of silver from a glitter pen or marker.

Try experimenting making your cut-out home made snow- flakes in silver paper or other interesting papers.

Make simple stars from cut-out card and decorate them with sequins; the snowflakes and stars will look good together on the tree or on a wall.

It is nice to let children help to make some easy decorations for the tree at Christmas time.

• Children could make snowflakes from cutting out paper patterns as the ones demonstrated here (once they are old enough to use scissors safely).
• A child could help you to paint pine cones for the tree, use child safe paints for this.
• Children could help to make salt dough decorations for the tree and paint them.
• They could wrap up small boxes in Christmas paper to make them look like presents to go on the tree or beneath it, until the real ones arrive.

with shop bought polymer clay, which is easy to use and dries quickly.

You could buy just one or two colors of this craft product and produce several different style ornaments for your Christmas tree. 

Red, green and white would be useful colors for Christmas decorations. You could insert a tiny piece of wire in the top to slot the hanging ribbon thro' to suspend them from the tree. 

Easy to make shapes in this polymer clay/air drying clay are shapes based are ideas that are based on ball shapes or tear drop shapes. Because of the weight it is a good idea to keep the sizes of you tree decorations small and thus lighter in weight.  

The tree would look good if you could make two or more of each design to hang them opposite each other on the tree.

Color Themes for Christmas Tree Decorations.

White and Silver.

Gold and Silver.

Green and Red.

Gold and Green.

Red and Gold.

Peacock blues and greens.

White Christmas tree black decorations with white and silver sequins on.

Shape Themes for Christmas Tree Decorations.

Snowflakes.

Snowflakes and stars.

Bells.

Subjects for Themes for Christmas Trees.

Angels.

Santa.

Birds:  White doves, robins.

Stars.

Snowflakes.

Snowmen.

Reindeers.

Christmas stockings.