Christmas Crafting

If you're my parent's and we haven't exchanged presents yet... stop reading now :)

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Just like any other holiday, we love adding a little crafting in whenever we get a chance.  I don't like spending money on wrapping paper, so we roll out our white paper (we use this stuff) and get to work. Sometimes we just draw little designs all over, but we had some leftover paint and decided to put it to good use. I started by painting random lines and it was easy enough for Cora to get in on the action. Its tempting to do an elaborate design, but I think something simple like this still does the job and looks nice wrapped around our presents with a simple bow.

I wanted to do a quick handprint ornament for presents and our own tree so I did a quick Pinterest search and found some cute handprint ornaments painted out with a Santa face  (like this one and this one). The linked tutorials make this using salt dough, but I had some sculpey clay on hand and figured it'd be much easier. Cora stayed still long enough for me to cut out her handprint, but I traced Ida's hand on paper so I didn't have to keep her from grabbing at the clay. Don't forget to add a hole to add string later.

Once the clay cooled off from the oven, I drew the had and face outlines so and we got to painting. Cora needed a little help painting some of the smaller sections, so she mostly stuck to the hat. When we do this again, I would paint the whole thing white then do the detailed pieces.

After they dried, I retraced my lines with a sharpie and glued the googly eyes on (I used about 10mm ones similar to these). I used some bakers twine to hang them up. I love how these look and am imagining a whole tree full of these little Santa handprints... and even adding in a grinch here or there.

What are your favorite holiday crafts? Do you like handmade or store bought ornaments?