Christmas Craft Projects I Like on the Web

I've been so busy making things for this weekend's craft fair that I haven't kept up with some other obligations. I have four different church and work related Christmas functions that I need to come up with activities for. The one looming closest is the Christmas fair at our church. We have a lot of young kids come and make all kinds of fun things. I haven't even thought about what I want to do. Last year, we put red, white and green tri-beads on craft wire to make candy cane decorations. The organized people in the committee have already come up with making refrigerator magnets made from walnut halves, a peace dove project, and a wooden ornament project.



While I'm surfing looking for ideas, I thought I'd share some of the ones that I think look interesting in case there are others looking for the same thing.





Craft Stylish has several projects:


The Holiday Button Napkin Ring project ooks quick and easy and I might even try it with pipe cleaners. This frame idea might be fun to try in the two day camp I'm doing the the 22nd and 23rd of this month. I also like this mini wreath idea - love using my fabric scraps and recycling little things I'm only worried about having to cut out lots of cardboard circles. This might work on my Saturday, Dec 13th, holiday ornament workshop at the Southern VT Arts Center.


I've seen many padded hangar projects before, but never have I seen one that uses recycled plastic bags for the padding - a personal favorite material for me. I think this would be a cute gift to make for someone.



These two projects come from Craftideas.

Here's a tissue paper candy cane project that might work for the Church function I also like this folded paper ornament; especially if the kids actually paint the paper ahead of time.


I can always find some fun ideas at Martha Stewart's site.

I like these foil ornaments; it could easily be expanded to other shapes and ideas. I've had kids sit for hours winding yarn around craft sticks making God's Eyes. These yarn ornaments remind me of them. I love these ornaments made from office supplies. It's always fun to use unusual materials; people are always so surprised. This might be too hard to cut out for the kids, but I think this project is great- an angel made from a paper plate- I've been getting into that paper cutting thing (but can't think what it is called)

That's all for today. Let me know if you try any of these projects.

Puzzles and Words

Another favorite activity of mine is puzzles. I don't mean jigsaw puzzles (even though I do like to do them on occasion), I mean word games and as my family and close friends know, I mean saduko, kakuro, killer saduko and all those variations. My husband is always commenting about how much more I could get done in a day if I didn't do my puzzles. -oh well, the cleaning will just have to wait. Our family plays a word game at dinner called "ghost" and we love to listen to the puzzlemaster, Will Shortz, on VPR.

Ok, so I was looking up the term "mirror image" on Google (don't ask why) and came across the term Palindrome. Maybe everyone else knows what that term is, and I'm sure I learned it in high school, but I didn't remember. A palindrome is any word, phrase, number combinations that is the same backwards and forwards. Mom is a palindrome. Dad is a palindrome. 3663 is a palindrome. "Was it a rat I saw?" is a palindrome. Wikipedia has more information and some really amazing historical examples. Here are several other sites about palindromes. This one has a fill in the blank story and this one has a palindrome for the day. I love researching and learning about this kind of stuff. I could literally spend the rest of the day finding out more and more.... but my to do list is getting rather long.