4 Easy and fun Christmas craft cards to make with your kids!

Facebook, in all its spying wisdom has discovered I have a weakness for Christmas craft activities. And of course the more I paused or clicked, the more it showed me….
So after unintentionally gathering a substantial number of these, I thought I’d share our versions here!
My smallest is a crafting enthusiast and a BIG fan of Christmas. We’re going to be doing ALLLL the Christmas crafts this festive season and I’m going to share them with you all, starting with these fun cards.

1. Button Christmas craft cards: Snowmen, Christmas Trees and Baubles

What you need:
– Buttons
– Coloured card
– A biro/black pen
– A ruler
– PVA glue and a spreader
– Coloured paper (optional)
– Star stickers (optional)

This was one of the easiest Christmas crafts we did! I sourced a big ol’ box of buttons from the charity shop, tipped them out on the table and away we went.
I copied 3 ideas I saw. The first Christmas craft was Christmas trees, where you form the buttons into a sort of Christmas tree shape and then glue them to the front of your card. After some trial and error, I found it easiest to place my buttons on the table and sort of shove them into a Christmas tree shape, using larger buttons at first and then filling the gaps with the smaller ones. I then picked up each button individually and glued it into place on my card. But I’m a bit of a perfectionist with this, my youngest just made it up as she went along and was really pleased with the result 🙂 If you have star stickers, these really add to the effect to top off your tree.

The second Christmas craft card we tried was turning the card landscape and having ‘baubles’ hanging down from the top of the card. I don’t think you need much guidance for this one!

Thirdly, my favourite. Snowmen. We had an abundance of white buttons, so this seemed like a great way to use them up. We added bits of coloured card to make the hats and scarves and drew arms on the card to finish.
Tip: If you want your snow man to have a scarf, it’s easiest to stick the back of the scarf to the card, then add the two buttons for your snow man after, and glue the front of the scarf over the buttons to finish.

2. Beaded Christmas craft Tree cards

What you need:
– Coloured card
– Scrap card for making a template
– Scissors
– Embroidery thread
– Beads
– A needle
– A pencil
– Something to make the holes
– Cellotape

For this Christmas craft activity, I started by making a Christmas tree template (i.e. a triangle!) and placed it on the centre of the folded sheet of coloured card. I then used a pencil to mark dots around the outside of the tree; these are where the holes will be made for threading. I didn’t want to draw a Christmas tree outline as that would be hard to remove after the fact and would ruin the effect a little.
I didn’t have an easy tool for making the holes and a standard hole punch wouldn’t really work here, so I (carefully) used a steak knife to make the holes. If your child is more able, you can skip making the holes, as the needle can just be pushed straight through the card.

Find a needle which is large enough to fit the embroidery thread but small enough to go through your beads. Thread the needle with thread attached through the back of the card, through the first hole nearest the top of the tree (I made a top hole in error, which we’ll later cover with a star sticker). Tape down the end of the thread with a small square of cellotape. Help your small person to draw the thread all the way through the hole until it is taut.
Now you can pop a bead on! I recommend using just 1 bead for the first couple of rows, then 2 or so for the next couple, adding more as the rows get longer. Don’t worry about the position of these, it’s easiest to adjust them at the end.
Thread the needle through your bead and push the needle through the corresponding hole opposite. Pull through until the thread is taut. Looking at the back of the card now, push the needle through the hole directly below the hole you have just come through. Now at the front of the card, pull the thread taut and add beads. Thread the needle through the corresponding hole opposite, now from the back of the card again, push the needle through the hole directly below.
And so on!

On the front of the card you should end up with parallel straight lines with beads on and the back of the card should show a tree outline in dashed stitches.

After the final row is complete, on the back, tape the end of the thread down and cut. My 5 year old was absolutely thrilled with her card and I think it looks bloody brilliant if I do say so myself!

You can vary this one a lot, it’s very flexible. I saw several Christmas craft cards where the thread zig-zagged down rather than horizontal lines, some made with brown string, others where a Christmas tree shape was cut out and the thread went across the hole to form the ‘tinsel’. Go nuts!

Tips: My small person needed lots of guidance on where to put the needle next and to make sure the thread was pulled taut each time. Also some help on how many beads to put on. Don’t pull the thread TOO tight as this will cause the card to bend, it should be just taut enough that it doesn’t sag.

I have many more Christmas craft activities to share, but I thought it might be more fun to share them as we go 🙂
Let me know if you end up trying any of these! I’d love to see your finished creations.

For other fun Christmas craft ideas, check out this link for some simple lolly stick Christmas crafts

If you enjoyed this blog post, please check out my other blog posts, such as 5 helpful reasons chew necklaces are good for anxiety