6 DIY Christmas Tree Ornaments

This year has been a chance for me to reflect on my own life style and how I want to live moving into the future. With climate change HERE, an always present sense of “what the fuck am I doing?”, and motherhood, I think about my impact often. I’m raising a little human on my own. I am purging all the items from my past lives that no longer serve me. I even purged my closet down to only the items I really love. That even means selling my Patagonia (aka Patagucci) Synchillla fleeces because they don’t fit me exactly how I want after all.

This past spring, I believed I was going to move. I had made a plan to sell or gift everything in my home and take off for the East coast. I called up my real estate agent, and we had a set time to put my house on the market. I put in a month’s notice for work. As a result, my house became more focused and more clutter free. We donated Christmas and Halloween decorations. I rearranged furniture countless times to prepare for staging and showing.

Then… I didn’t move…

Life changes direction quickly. Now this isn’t to say that I don’t want to move. God I want to move. And I will always have that desire until it fully happens. But for now, we are spending another holiday season in our home in WA. Since I started this path of purging and cleaning and ridding my life of unnecessary weight, it’s felt amazing. And it is something I want to continue to essentially minimize my life to only what is needed. That idea of having all that we need and not wasting time/money/things because we are trying to fill an evolutionary void. I have been on the other side of that, witnessing someone hoard and collect piles and piles of stuff because he thought he would need it, which he never did. It filled my garage and overflowed into my home and my yard. It took $1400, two junk haul trips, and 4 truck beds to get rid of it all. And there’s probably still shit in my attic.

But the holiday season always sets me off on a decorating frenzy – the lights, garlands, cute ornaments, and stockings. It’s a problem. This year, I decided I would make ornaments with my son instead of buying all new ones. It has saved us money by recycling items I already owned, and it offered bonding time with my overly active child. We still bought stockings from Target, two wooden decorative trees, and a black metal A-fame cabin that lights up. We can’t escape all of the consumerism that surrounds us, but we can make better choices surrounding out intent and materials we buy.

1. Scrap fabric garland

A few years ago when I was still customizing denim jackets, I reached out to a woman that repurposed Pendleton blankets into neck cowls. They weren’t really my thing, but I was interested in how she acquired her fabric and if she ever had leftover pieces that she tossed. I had (and still do have) a vision of creating a set of Pendleton slip-on Vans. One day. She sent me some of her leftover fabric in the mail. All I had to cover was the cost of shipping. There were probably ten different patterns with lots of possibilities. Unfortunately, they were not wide enough to fully cover my size 9 Vans so I held on to them. When I renovated my studio into a full on office, I found these still in the mailer and stored them until I had an idea of how to use them.

Then I got my noble fir and it clicked.

The garland is pretty rudimentary in design. I cut the fabric into triangles that are close to the same size and shape with regular scissors. I wasn’t too worried about making them all exact. If you want them to be exact, you can create a template using cardstock or cardboard and then cut them with a fabric knife and self healing mat. After I had cut enough triangles, I hot glued them onto some cotton yarn. Yarn has always been an impulse buy for me. But now that I avoid going to most craft stores and only want to buy sustainable yarn, my supply has dwindled quickly. I donated a lot of my yarn to friends and family as well as the youth shelter I where I worked.

After the hot glue cooled and hardened, it was time to wrap up the tree. There are lots of other options for fabric garlands that I have seen. Some folks take scraps of ribbon or fleece and tie it onto rope. Or you can cut out other materials, like cardstock or felt, and sew them together. To make it as eco-friendly as possible, use what you have available in your home before buying more supplies. This is probably a crafter’s nightmare! But it that has helped me scale back and focus on what I really need vs want.

2. Macramé quartz ornaments

Another item that I had held on to for several years was this bag of rough cut quartz I got at a gem show. If you think a place like Joann’s or Michael’s is dangerous, NEVER go to a gem show. It is nearly impossible to walk away without spending a couple hundred dollars. There’s so many beads, tumbler polished rocks, crystals, fossils, findings, jewelry making tools, and more. It’s overwhelming almost.

To make these ornaments, I took two strands of cotton yarn (about 24 inches in length each) and folded them in half. I tied a knot at the top, leaving enough space to form a loop for hanging on a tree branch. From there, it was a series of macramé style knots to hold the quartz in place. You can either do a square knot or an overhand knot. After completing about 6 to 8 knots on the sides, I tied off the bottom and trimmed any excess yarn.

3. Salt flour ornaments

My mom and I made salt flour once when I was around nine years old. I think I used it to make miniature furniture or small models of animals. We used a recipe of 1 part water and 1 part salt to 2 parts flour. You can adjust this to how many ornaments you would like to make. With 1 cup of water, 1 cup of salt, and 2 cups of flour we got 24 ornaments.

I gathered up our materials: ingredients, mixing bowl, measuring cup, rolling pin, and cookie cutters. I also grabbed some flour to spread on the counter while rolling out the dough. I used some evergreen sprigs to press into the rolled out dough for some added texture. You can also use stamps, lace, canvas… essentially anything that can add a fun texture to your pieces. Stone measured our our dry ingredients, and I added the water. He has been really interested in watching me cook and helping bake lately. We made pumpkin bread after making these ornaments too.

This whole process is really like making cookies. I kneaded the dough until all the ingredients were evenly incorporated then rolled out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Stone helped cut out the shapes while I placed them on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. After each round of cutting out shapes, I would knead and roll the dough again to use as much of the dough as possible. After we laid out the ornaments, I used a metal straw to poke holes for future twine.

I originally baked these in the oven at 170 degrees F for a few hours. The top sides felt dry, but the middle of each ornament still felt “doughy”. I increased the temp to 250 degrees and flipped the ornaments. Note, a higher temp will cause the ornaments to puff up a little. Next time, I will stick with 170 to 200 degrees and let them bake for longer. Once they were fully cooled, which took less than an hour, I painted them with white acrylic paint. You can paint them whatever colors you want or leave them more natural looking. A fun but more expensive alternative to the salt flour would be to use polymer clay to create ornaments. The polymer clay is smoother and not as porous as these ornaments and comes in multiple colors (like neon, pearlescent, glitter, and bold options). The downside is that it can get pretty expensive, and you would need to go to a craft store to buy the clay. These ornaments were super easy because these materials were all things we had at home.

4. Orange slices

One of the quintessential DIY ornaments are dehydrated orange slices. You can use really any citrus fruit: navel oranges, blood oranges, limes, grapefruit. They would all look and smell lovely. I would have really loved to use blood oranges or grapefruit for the deep red and pink colors.

These are pretty quick and easy. I sliced the oranges as evenly as possible into 1/4 inch think slices and dried off each side with a towel. The orange slices were placed on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper and placed in a 200 degree oven and baked for 2-3 hours, flipping halfway. Fun note, this activity showed me the areas of my oven that run hotter than the rest of the oven. A few of my slices burned or partially burned. We still used them since they looked kinda cool in contrast to the brighter orange slices. I used a pair of scissors to poke a hole through the orange flesh for our twine. Then Stone helped me hang them up.

Note: these are definitely indoor decorations. Using them outside in climates that typically get rain or snow will cause the slices to rehydrate and start to mold. Like, our carved pumpkins molded and collapsed after two weeks this Halloween. The PNW is ruthless when the rainy season hits. All the mold.

5. Macramé wooden bead ornaments

Similar to the quartz ornaments, I made ornaments out of some giant wood beads that I had used when making plant hangers. I figured a simple twist at the top along with securing the bead in place would be a nice visual. I learned how to make all these types of knots both during summer camps when we would make friendship bracelets and when I got into high school and made hemp necklaces. I don’t know why or how hemp necklaces with glass mushroom pendants became such a big fashion statement in the late 90s and early 2000s, but they were a hot commodity at my school and in certain circles.

I have a funny story about how we choose to embellish our bodies with jewelry or body modification. I didn’t get my ears pierced until I was 18. My parents didn’t believe in piercing my ears with out my informed consent so we just waited until I could legally decide for myself. I ended up with 4 holes in my right ear and 9 in my left. As time progressed, stretching ear lobes became popular. A couple guys that I knew in high school (and then we attended the same college) also got their ears pierced but always wore diamond studs. As I was stretching my ear lobes, they were buying bigger karats. Any time that we saw each other on campus, we would hype each other up with how big our jewelry was getting. I eventually stopped stretching my ears when I got to 5/8 inch. After having my son via emergency c-section, I took out all my jewelry except my septum piercing. Now I want to have corrective surgery to close my lobes. Funny how time changes our perspectives and personal style.

These still use the same cotton yarn that I was using for the other ornaments. I cut four strands of yarn, two about 12 in and the other two about 24 in. I folded those in half and tied a knot at the top. This left me with four roughly even short strings and four long ones. I split up the strands with the four short ones in the middle and two long ones on each side. Then I created the twist by making square knots, starting each knot on the same side. Maybe one day I will do a tutorial for macramé knots on here. The wood bead is also held in place with a square knot and then tied at the bottom to finish the ornament.

6. Spell jars

When I think of Christmas time, I don’t always think of presents and Santa. Even though that is on the forefront of my kid’s mind. He actually is already asking me who drops off the gifts. He wants to believe it’s Santa, but he’s been guessing it’s me for the past week now. My nuclear family didn’t do Christmas like a lot of my friend’s families did. We didn’t go to church. We had a tree but it was attacked so many times by our two cats that we eventually stopped putting it up. We only had lights up in the windows if I taped them up. And my parent’s stopped wrapping gifts when I was probably 8 or 9. By then, they would just take my shopping to get a gift I had really been wanting and some clothes I needed. We were pretty practical with our holidays.

Now, I equate the holiday season with the changing of the seasons. It’s no coincidence that Christmas Day is so close to the Winter Solstice. There’s a reason out major Christian holidays line up with cycles in the natural world. So when December hits, the one thing that holds my attention is how each day gets shorter and the night gets longer. Similar to how the moon goes through its phases, how humans go through their phases from birth to death, and how nature will always move in cycles of death and rebirth. So we bring in a tree from the outside to provide it warmth; we hang up lights to find hope that the long summer days will return; and we start thinking about what we wish to leave behind (die) from the prior year and what we want to nurture (birth) in the upcoming year.

I have quite a collection of random oddities and jewelry making supplies. Organizers full of gemstone chips, animal bones, charms, and rocks. I also had some bags of dried flowers and herbs. So Stone and I made some spell jar ornaments. They aren’t really “spells” as much as they are just fun intentions for the new year as we move from dormancy to life. We got some clear empty ornaments and cleansed them with some incense. We made different jars to represent different manifestations for our life. I made jars for health, self-love, protection, and prosperity. Stone chose his jars based off colors. He especially enjoyed making green ornaments with moss and rough quartz. We placed each ornament on the tree as we completed them.

I still have a few decorations I want to put up through the month. We haven’t done any work outside on the porch but I have plans that involve fresh cedar garlands and maybe some vintage lights I have been holding onto for several years. I am still committed to not buying any new items that we don’t absolutely need unless they can be recycled or repurposed. And Stone mentioned making paper snowflakes tonight on our drive home from work. Looks like we have a weekend project ahead of us.