Christmas ornaments from stencils for all ages

Last year my oldest daughter took it upon herself to start making cutout Christmas tree ornaments from stencils. Now it’s becoming a tradition. My big girls usually make on them on fly, grabbing computer paper and doing it all on their own when the inspiration strikes them. Keeping colored pencils, scissors, a hole puncher and pipe cleaners readily available means our tree gets filled up with these in no time.

In order to preserve our stencil ornaments, we run them through a home laminator machine (you can pick them up in craft stores or Target for about $40). Using heavy, non glossy card stock would eliminate that need and provide a more earth friendly option. But that laminator machine, is well, such a fun splurge of a thing to have around the house for special occasion items.

Lastly, we use the hole puncher and pipe cleaners to make a loop and hang the cutouts on the tree. Like I said yesterday about our candy cane craft, we love pipe cleaners because they are so easy for children to use.

For the stencils we used Christmas Stencil Cards by Usborne Books. Usborne books can be hard to find sometimes because they are designed to be sold from individual dealers, sort of like an online Tupperware party philosophy. They are gaining in popular and are seeping their way into bookstores – so keep your eye our for them. We got ours at our local bookstore two years ago.

As you can see below, this is a craft all ages can participate in.

To recap our week of crafts so far, here are links to the other posts on our ornaments for our homemade Christmas tree. There was finger knitting garland, upcycled burlap balls, and candy canes from beads and pipe cleaners. Still to come is garland from felt and photos from tree stumps. Hopefully that will keep you stumped! Come back for more crafting soon.