Crafts For Christmas

First make an advent calendar out of two large pieces of tag board. One piece of tag board will be for the back of the calendar. On the other piece prepare the "calendar". Write the days of the week across the top (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). Then make twenty- five "doors" (one for each day until Christmas) by measuring out two inch squares and making a pencil line around the square. Make sure the squares line up under the appropriate day of the week. For example, if December First falls on a Monday, then your first square should be under the heading "Monday" and so on, until you have all the squares through December 25 on your "calendar". Number the squares 1-25. Then, with a knife or sharp scissors, cut on the line on three sides of each box, at the top line of the box, the right side line of the box, and the bottom line of the box. DO NOT cut the left line of the box, as that is the door "hinge".

Now glue the front tag board piece to the back tag board piece making sure that you don't glue the twenty-five "doors" shut. You can avoid this by running a bead of glue around the outer edges of the back side of the top piece of tag board and running other lines of glue between the days of the week from top to bottom (avoiding the doors). Then place the back piece of tag board against the backside of the front piece.

After the glue has dried decorate the front side of the calendar in holiday colors. You might want to trim in cold braid, put a red ribbon above each door, and use a small colorful bead to serve as the "doorknob" of each door, etc.

Then open each door and write the name of the craft you will be doing that day and close the door again, so that the children won't see ahead of time what they will get to do for that day. They and you will find that you will love this time together as you count down your days to Christmas.

The crafts you choose to put in your advent calendar can be theme-based or random Christmas craft activities. For example, you could have a different ornament craft behind each day, or you could have the children make a different gift for someone they care about each day, or perhaps each day could be stamping a different holiday card. The possibilities are nearly endless. Here are some ideas to get your own creative Christmas craft ideas flowing:

Make a Santa Claus ornament: You will need bake-able polymer clay, a paint brush, acrylic paints, ribbon, baking sheet, spatula, and a water-base gloss varnish. With the clay, make a small oval for Santa's head. Then use small balls of clay to build up the cheeks, nose and lips. Use a knife to refine the other features of Santa's face. Next roll "snakes" of clay to make strings of beard, and to add a moustache and eyebrows. Add a triangular hat shape to attach to the head, press it against the head and add a layer of tiny balls for the "trim of the hat" and for the tip of the hat. At the top of the hat, make a small loop of clay or insert a small bent wire to form a loop. This will be the hanging loop. Next paint Santa with the acrylic paints. Carefully move the ornament to a baking sheet using a spatula so you don't break it. Then bake the ornament at about 200 degrees for at least two hours. (Increasing the heat of the oven may bake the ornament faster, but it will also make it weaker and produce poor results.) After the ornament has cooled and dried for twenty- four hours, seal it with the water-base gloss varnish and thread the hanging ribbon through the top loop and tie.

Make a Christmas t-shirt: Have your children design their own t-shirt to wear while they work on Christmas crafts. It will give them a chance to be creative and will protect their good clothes from the damage of paints and glues. You will need a plain white cotton t-shirt in your child's size, fabric paints, fabric glitter, fabric glue, and washable sequins and embellishments. Depending on your child's age, you can have them design on paper first and transfer their design to fabric. You can also provide old Christmas cards for ideas on how to draw Christmas trees and pinecones and candy canes, etc. If you have very young children, there is nothing wrong with a free-for-all design where gluing trims and painting abstract colors in an abstract way appear to have no logic. Your child will be thrilled with his or her own creativity and will wear it with pride.

Make a beaded candy cane or a wreath: You will need pipe cleaners, wire cutters, and tri-cornered beads in red, white, and green. For the candy cane, cut one pipe cleaner in half with a wire cutter and bend the bottom end up slightly. Fit together two red tri-cornered beads, then two white tri-cornered beads and repeat until the entire pipe cleaner is filled. Bend the top of the pipe cleaner at the end slightly. Now bend the top third of the beaded pipe cleaner down to make a shape of a candy cane. For the wreath, cut the pipe cleaner in half and bend up one end at the tip. Put green tri-cornered beads on the pipe cleaner until half the stem is covered. Then add three red beads and fill the rest of the pipe cleaner with green beads. Bend the wire to form a circle and twist the two ends together to form the wreath.

Other suggestions: spend one day stamping plain brown wrapping paper with Christmas designs to make your own wrapping paper. You can spend another advent day gluing Christmas beads and sequins to plain white candles. You can make Christmas soaps, felt placemats for your Christmas table setting, Christmas napkin rings out of paper towel holders. The possibilities for your Christmas advent craft activity are only limited by your imagination.