crafts, create, easter, father's day, gift ideas, halloween

10 of the best Arts & Crafts Ideas for any Holiday

Arts and crafts have long been a beloved pastime, offering a way to unleash creativity, create personalised decorations, and make heartfelt gifts. No matter the holiday, from Christmas to Halloween, Thanksgiving to Easter, crafting can elevate celebrations with handmade charm. In this article, we explore some of the best arts and crafts ideas that suit any holiday, along with tips to make your projects stand out.

1. Personalised Holiday Cards

There’s something special about receiving a handmade card. Personalised cards let you tailor designs to specific holidays, whether it’s Valentine’s hearts, spooky Halloween scenes, or festive Christmas trees. You can use:

Watercolors or Acrylic Paints: Create unique designs with vibrant colors.
Calligraphy or Hand Lettering: Add elegant, custom messages.
Stamps and Embossing Powders: Bring texture and dimension to your creations.

If you’re short on time or want professional-looking designs, using Christmas SVGs free templates can add flair without the effort of drawing from scratch. Simply cut the designs with a Cricut or Silhouette machine, and voila—your cards are holiday-ready!

2. Holiday-Themed Mason Jars

Mason jars are versatile and can be transformed into charming holiday décor. Here are some ideas:

Halloween Lanterns: Paint jars with spooky faces or wrap them with gauze for a “mummy” effect. Add a tealight candle inside to create a glowing lantern.
Christmas Snow Globes: Fill jars with faux snow, mini trees, and small figurines. Seal the lid and shake it for a magical effect.
Easter Treat Jars: Paint the jars in pastel colors, add bunny ears to the lid, and fill them with candy.

Mason jar crafts are not only decorative but also make great gifts, especially when filled with homemade goodies like hot cocoa mix or cookie ingredients.

3. DIY Wreaths for Every Season

Wreaths aren’t just for Christmas! With a little creativity, you can design a wreath for any holiday:

Spring/Easter Wreaths: Use pastel flowers, greenery, and egg-shaped decorations.
Fall/Thanksgiving Wreaths: Incorporate autumn leaves, mini pumpkins, and burlap ribbons.
Patriotic Wreaths: Use red, white, and blue elements for holidays like Independence Day.

Creating a wreath is simple with a basic grapevine or foam base. Add elements using a hot glue gun and hang it on your door to welcome guests in style.

4. Handmade Ornaments and Decorations

Making your own ornaments allows for a personal touch during the holidays. Here’s how you can customize them:

Christmas Ornaments: Use clear ornaments to fill with glitter, paint, or miniature scenes. For a rustic look, try wood slice ornaments with painted designs.
Valentine’s Day Décor: Create heart-shaped garlands with felt or paper. Hang them over doorways or windows for a festive touch.
Fourth of July Décor: Craft stars from paper or fabric and string them into garlands for a patriotic celebration.

These handmade items are perfect for adding a personal touch to your home or giving as gifts.

5. Holiday-Themed Candles

Candles are a timeless holiday craft, adding ambiance and warmth to any celebration. You can customize them in a variety of ways:

Scented Candles: Add holiday-inspired scents like cinnamon, pine, or peppermint.
Decorative Candles: Use stencils or decals to add festive designs to plain candles.
Layered Candles: Create multi-colored layers that reflect holiday themes, like red and green for Christmas or orange and black for Halloween.

Candle-making kits are widely available and make the process simple for beginners.

6. Painted Rocks for Every Occasion

Rock painting is a fun, budget-friendly craft that works for all ages. You can create:

Easter Egg Rocks: Paint rocks to look like Easter eggs and hide them for a unique egg hunt.
Spooky Rocks: Design rocks with ghost, witch, or pumpkin faces for Halloween.
Holiday Messages: Write inspirational or holiday-themed quotes on rocks and place them around your garden or give them as gifts.

Seal the painted rocks with a weather-resistant varnish to ensure they last.

7. DIY Table Centerpieces

A festive centerpiece can transform your holiday table. Consider these ideas:

Thanksgiving Cornucopia: Fill a woven basket with gourds, leaves, and seasonal fruits.
Christmas Candle Display: Arrange candles of varying heights with pinecones and holly.
Springtime Floral Arrangements: Use fresh flowers and pastel-colored candles for Easter or Mother’s Day.

Centerpieces can be as simple or elaborate as you like, making them a versatile option for any holiday.

8. Handmade Gift Wrap and Tags

Why buy gift wrap when you can make your own? Custom wrapping paper and tags add a special touch to any present:

Stamping: Use holiday-themed stamps and ink to decorate plain kraft paper.
Hand-Drawn Designs: Doodle festive images directly onto wrapping paper.
Natural Elements: Incorporate sprigs of pine, dried orange slices, or cinnamon sticks into your wrapping for a rustic look.

For gift tags, cut shapes from cardstock and embellish them with stickers, ribbon, or calligraphy.

9. Holiday-Themed Tote Bags and T-Shirts

Personalized clothing and accessories are not only fun to make but also useful:

Fabric Painting: Use fabric paint to create holiday-themed designs on tote bags or t-shirts.
Iron-On Transfers: Print designs and apply them to fabric using a heat press or iron.
Embroidery: For a more advanced craft, add embroidered holiday motifs to clothing.

These items make fantastic gifts and can also be used to carry holiday essentials.

10. Baking and Decorating Cookies

While not a traditional craft, decorating cookies is a creative activity that doubles as a delicious treat. You can:

Use Royal Icing: Create intricate designs on sugar cookies shaped like holiday symbols.
Make Gingerbread Houses: Build and decorate miniature houses with candy and icing.
Themed Cupcakes: Decorate cupcakes with fondant or piped frosting in seasonal colors.

Hosting a cookie decorating party is a fun way to engage friends and family in holiday preparations.

There You Have It

No matter the time of year, crafting is a delightful way to celebrate the holidays and add a personal touch to your home and gifts. Whether you’re painting rocks, designing wreaths, or making personalized candles, these arts and crafts ideas will spark joy and creativity. With just a few materials and some imagination, you can create beautiful decorations and keepsakes that make every holiday memorable. And don’t forget to explore free templates for added inspiration and ease in your crafting projects!

This is a collaborative post.

FREE printables, halloween, key stage 2, kids

Halloween Pumpkin Paper Pom-Pom FREE printable

We got a little bit seasonal and decided to turn our giant orange paper pom-pom into a PUMPKIN!
So here’s a halloween pumpkin FREE printable for you to download, print off and stick with a Pritt stick onto to the paper pom-pom – how cool is this! If you like this, you’ll like 11yo’s spin on it – with his FREE downloadable Witch’s face here.

Really easy Pumpkin face – halloween pumpkin free printable, have a go by clicking here for our FREE downloadable template just print off, and cut out the shapes, in fact, print two, and use one as a template for your pumpkin this year too!!

click here for FULL HOW TO instructions on making the paper pom-poms

12 simple steps – really easy to follow, our kids have been making them in ALL sorts of colours – we’ve even mixed up different shades of green here…
If you fancy having a go yourself click here.

Free printable Pumpkin face, just attach to giant paper pom-pom or use as a template to carve your pumpkin!

If you have a thing for giant paper pompoms, click here to see our crepe paper version, with raindrops!

This post was first published Sept 29 2014. inspired by a *how to* video by RedTedArt and myself

Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and is a lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!

crafts, google+ hangouts, halloween, key stage 2, kids

Stick Crafts – Shadow Puppet

Chaos writes:

Here’s a very simple stick craft we’ve been doing this week… great shadow puppets inspired by Chinese New Year:

You’ll need some sticks (!) from the garden, or as we do, collected on weekend walks by small children. Some black card, sellotape, a pencil, scissors and some ‘brads’ (the pins with bendy legs, I never remember what their name is!) Oh, and some coloured tissue paper or sweet wrappers. AND a torch if you fancy doing a shadow puppet show!

We drew the dragon ‘pieces’ out onto the black card – cut them out, and joined them together with the brads (we used a bit of plasticine behind the card, and pushed a pencil through to make the hole for the brad).

Attach the sticks with tape at the back and you’re ready to go! You’ll need a couple of characters for the shadow puppet show – standing behind a large white sheet – we dimmed the lights, shone the torch and tried them out. We made up some short stories for our characters and put on a fun silhouette show!!

Click the YouTube link to view the Google+ hangout hosted by Maggy Woodley from Red Ted Art and meet me Ali Clifford at the Stick Craft hangout with Anthea Barton from Zing Zing Tree, Kelly Innes ( Domestic Goddesque) and Liz Burton.

Don’t forget to head over to Red Ted Art and check out the links for all the crafts featured on the video:

I also write over on www.agreenerlifeforus.com 🙂 and incredibusy.com (first published 2013)

crafts, create, FREE printables, halloween, kids, monster

Milk Carton Skull Lanterns

So with much delight, we introduce our latest invention, the Milk Carton Skull Lanterns!

Spike age 14:

We really wanted to have a go at making some skull lanterns, and thought the milk carton would be perfect for this, and it wasn’t until we started planning the graphics for it that we realised how brilliant it was that the handle itself created two brilliant indentations that were perfect for the skull’s eye sockets!!

We’ve since made LOADS of these are they are so easy to make, you can either print off the FREE printable here, or use marker pens, like these * affiliate links which work really well on plastic bottles – for full instructions watch my Mum’s incredibusy youtube video here.

For the PRINTABLE Skull’s face template click here

For more FREE printables for Halloween click here for Pumpkins
and here for brilliant Witches Hats
Some fab paper skull potato print Halloween party bags
How about Toffee Apples!
And some wonderful FREE printable, Skull Bunting

Ali also blogs over on incredibusy.com and FunCraftsKids.com and is a lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!

crafts, create, halloween, monster, Uncategorized

How to make a Halloween Leaf Wreath

How to make a Halloween Leaf Wreath

Thank you for visiting, this marvellous craft can now be found HERE

Pen for writing on conkers – available here in the UK, here in the US

Well; that’s the weekend… conkers and scary skulls; this is what I’ve been doing with 12yo whilst 13yo seems to be drowning in homework – hardly fair right? So we’ve left him to it at home and walked up to tennis; the weather is wonderful and we’ll be scrumpy-ing some little apples we’ve spotted on the way home… Oh incidentally: we have a “plan” for our conker skulls; will keep you posted… Meanwhile do keep your #halloweencrafts 🎃 coming for judge @innerchildfun #kidscrafts101 and your #sgiew_potplant shots too so that @komoonko can find them 🌿 . #sgiew #conkers #autumn #littlestoriesofmylife #flatlayforever #fromwhereistand #potplant #cactus #cactuslover #slowlivingforlife . Hosts – we should have a party! @babbledabbledo @redtedart @willowdaygram!

A photo posted by Ali Clifford (@incredibusy) on Oct 2, 2016 at 7:10am PDT

Ali also writes at aGreenerLifeforus.com

crafts, create, halloween

HOW TO make paper pom-poms

We posted a link to one of our most popular instagram pictures a few month’s ago – these crepe paper pom-pom clouds, with button raindrops which had everybody gasping with delight – and didn’t get around to actually posting a full how to, so here we go… (you can see why it took so long to post a ‘how to’ – LOTS of photos!)

1, 2) Concertina fold 8-10 sheets of tissue paper
3) Tie a length of string to the centre of the folded paper
4, 5) Trim the two ends of the folded concertina paper in a curve (keep the off-cuts, you never know when you might need them!)

6) Fan the pom-pom out flat as it will go
7) Pull up one thin sheet of tissue paper at 90 degrees
8) Pull out the opposite sheet of tissue paper, at 90 degrees

9) Rotate the tissue paper pom-pom and pull out opposite sheets of the paper
10) Keep pulling and fluffing the single sheets of tissue paper to create the paper pompom.

and that’s it! – to see how you can create something quite amazing to hang in your bedroom, click here to see our crepe paper version, with raindrops!

If you fancy having a go yourself click here, alternative you can purchase them here at Delights in packs of three!

Ali also blogs over on aGreenerLifeforus.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello!

baking, cooking, cooking with kids, halloween, kids

Toffee Apples

I used to LOVE Toffee Apples as a kid, well, I SAY that, I do seem to remember just eating the toffee, and discarding the bit with the vitamins… My boys on the other hand, food-swots that they are, love getting through the toffee to the yummy healthy apple centre! So I thought I’d share the recipe we use with you, just in time for Halloween and a few fireworks for Bonfire Night here in the UK!

you will need:

6 medium sized apples
200g golden caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
half tsp vinegar
50ml water
Sprinkles (optional)

1) Pop the apples into a bowl of boiling water to remove the waxy finish, rub them dry with a tea towel, this allows the toffee to adhere to the apples. Push a wooden lolly stick into each apple.

2) Lay a sheet of greaseproof paper onto a plate beside the stove, and space the apples on this so they do not touch each other. I sprinkled some ‘hundreds and thousands’ onto the paper first, you don’t NEED to do this… looks pretty though 🙂

3) Pour the sugar into a pan along with 50ml water and set over a medium heat for five mins until the sugar dissolves, then stir in the vinegar and syrup. If you have a sugar thermometer (I don’t), pop it in the pan and boil to 140C or ‘hard crack’ stage. I find after about ten mins, you can test the toffee by pouring a little into a bowl of cold water. It should harden instantly and, when removed, be brittle and easy to break. If you can still squash the toffee, boil it for a tiny bit longer…

4) Next bit – act fast! Dunk the first apple into the pan, swill the toffee around so it’s fully coated, allow excess to drip back into the pan, and then place the apple back into its spot on the greaseproof paper, careful not to bump it into the other apples…

Obviously let them cool down well before eating, as the toffee is SUPER hot, and if you have any toffee left over, poor onto another sheet of greaseproof paper (with a lip so it doesn’t run) and the kids can have fun cracking it with a rolling pin when it’s cooled and set!

To keep the theme of apples going, and inspiration for a slightly healthier option, try Domesticgoddesque’s baked apples – Or try Lifeatthezoo‘s baked apple version and then, to go with your bonfire night treats…how about the Red Ted Art’s edible sparklers!

Oh, by the way, I’m also on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Google+, Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x LIKE IT? Pin it!

crafts, google+ hangouts, halloween, kids, monster

Halloween Skull potato print party bags

What is it with skulls? There is something so graphically appealing about them… and with several small boys to entertain for yet another birthday party, I decided to involve them in making wrapping paper, and party bags… So we each carved a face into a potato and got printing!

It’s pretty simple stuff, you can see in the photograph of the potato, you slice it lengthwise, and carefully cut the mouth and eyes with a sharp knife. It’s essential that the potato is sliced FLAT otherwise the print won’t be nice and clean.

8yo (as he was at the time) enjoyed mixing the colours to get the murky grey, and we rolled out some brown packing paper on the table to print up the wrapping paper. The party bags are really easy to make too, you need a tissue box for a template and for an easy ‘how to’ vlog – click over to redtedart.com where one of my earliest appearances on video camera will entertain you…

These potato skulls would be great for Halloween bunting, or if you didn’t fancy getting the paints out, dowload my FREE Day of the Dead printables here.

Want to see me talking about this project and skull potato printing? Click the link and photo left, to watch via youtube…. Maggy Woodley from Red Ted Art hosted a fabulous “Halloween crafts’ on Google+.

Maggy talked us through some lovely ideas, including toilet roll bat pinatas! More links to follow from Anthea at zingzingtree, Aly at plus2point4.co.uk, Kelly at domesticgoddesque.com and Lizzie from missielizzie-meandmyshadow.

Oh, by the way, I’m also on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Google+, Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x LIKE IT? Pin it!

crafts, halloween, kids, monster

Day of The Dead skull bunting FREE printable

So Autumn is upon us, and time to look at a Mexican holiday celebration which is new to my boys: Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos which is the first two days of November.

Although the holiday involves artistic representations of skulls and skeletons, the occasion is festive, rather than morbid. Death isn’t seen as the end of one’s life, but as a natural part of the life cycle; the dead come back to visit every year. In the UK, around this time of year, Halloween’s images of skulls and skellybobs are spooky,eery, and scary. By contrast, On Day of the Dead, it’s about celebrating with the family both alive and remembering those who are no longer with us.

I asked the boys what they would like to make, and ‘masks’ and ‘bunting’ seemed popular and do-able choices… as they are 9 and 10 now, and love their Marvel graphic novels, they wanted me to ‘draw’ the templates in Illustrator for them to colour – so that’s what we’ve done… and I’ve attached a FREE Printable for you to colour and create your own Day of the Dead garland too…(you too can make your own ‘microwave dave’ character like the 10yo…)

Day of the Dead Bunting – you will need:

A print out of our FREE PRINTABLE
Colouring pencils, glitter, or paints
A hole punch
Ribbon

My boys really enjoyed colouring the skulls, and requested Star Wars themed skulls too… not one, but two, so have fun – and would love to see yours too 🙂 If you’d like to see more SKULL craft ideas, click here to take a look at our potato print skull party bag how to!

Maggy talked us through some lovely ideas, from skulls on stones, and corks, balloons and more links to follow from Anthea at zingzingtree who loves a bit of skull face painting, and talked about T-shirt printing, skeletons and sculpting and glitter and check out Kelly at domesticgoddesque.com and her day of the dead spoon craft!

Oh, by the way, I’m also on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Google+, Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x LIKE IT? Pin it!

halloween, kids

Now clean your teeth!

Chaos writes:

So, what do you do – let them eat all of their Halloween treats all in one go? Or stagger it and let them eat some every few days? Anyone know a dentist?!