crafts

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

10 of the best Arts & Crafts Ideas for any Holiday
rudolph-reindeer-christmas-cards

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.

cooking with kids, crafts, create, education, gardening with kids

Make a Natural biodedegradeable Dream Catcher
Dream catcher natural and biodegradable

Making a Dream Catcher using natural, found objects and at the same time ticking the boxes of three STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths and the Arts) practices:

The Science (making dough with salt, water and flour for the beads)

The Arts (designing and sculpting the salt dough leaves, and assembling your dream catcher)

The Maths (geometry of weaving a pattern with a single length of twine)

Dream catchers with organic cotton yarm and hand made salt dough beads
dream catchers, with natural cotton yarn and handmade salt dough beads

This is such a fun project. And one that you could do either indoors or outside in the warmer weather – we really love a craft that all ages can enjoy – and this three sides dream catcher can be a bit of a challenge when it comes to the weaving, so we will link some YouTube tutorials at the foot of this article so that you can get acquainted with the dream catcher weaving geometry at your leisure.

Before you get started, make sure you have everything you need for your beautiful natural dream catcher – go on a nature hunt, look for feathers, acorns, pine cones, and lots of sticks!

sticks

You’ll need some cotton string, or strong yarn, and we also made some colourful salt dough beads and ‘leaves’ so that everything is biodegradable – this means you can eventually hang your dream catchers outside in the garden or the woods, for them to let nature decay them – hey, that may even be a bit of a science lesson right there too!

Salt dough leaves and beads recipe

  • 1 part salt
  • 2 parts plain flour
  • half to one part water
  • optional – some natural food colouring (if you are feeling ambitious – you could go as far as making your own dough dye with beetroot! hey – experiment, have some fun)
home made salt dough beads

We mixed the dough into three bowls, and added three colours – subtle so that they would blend well with nature – and rolled small balls, pushing a skewer through to make a bead, we dried the beads by ‘stringing’ them onto metal skewers and propping up off the baking tray to harden in the oven on a very low 100 degrees temperature, checking on the beads after about fifteen minutes, and turning them on the skewers so that they didn’t stick.

The leaves we made by rolling the dough out to about 5mm thick, and used a leaf shaped cookie cutter and a knife to score the marks on the ‘leaves’ and push a hole at the top of the leaf to allow it to be attached to the dreamcatcher. Again, we allowed these leaves to harden, baking them at the bottom of the oven, for about half an hour to an hour, using a cooling rack from the kitchen. We made these beads and salt dough leaves in advance of our dream catcher construction to allow them to harden – word of warning – don’t let them get damp, they will go soggy!

The assembly of your dream catcher

Now you have everything you need, start to pull it all together. Make a triangle from three sticks of the same length, tying them tight in each of the three corners.

Make a ‘bobbin’ with one short stick, about 4cm long, wrap the yarn around and around until it’s full of yarn – (you’ll have to experiment, but you’ll need enough yarn to create the geometrical pattern on the dream catcher ‘web’).

Using the yarn on this bobbin, start by tying a knot next to one of the three corners of the triangle frame.

Get weaving that web

As you start to ‘weave’ your web the first row can be quite loose.
Evenly spaced, start to work the yarn around the triangle:

  1. Pass the end of your yarn around a stick.
  2. Bring the end under the straight part of the yarn.
  3. Bring the end up and pass it through the eye of the loop you just made.
  4. Pull it tighter to complete a half hitch.
  5. Tie the hitch the same at each intersection of the yarn.
  6. Continue around the triangle, to ‘row two’ in the same way, see diagram (and the video links below)
  7. The next hitch is made at the midpoint of the first loop in the first row.
Weaving the web on your frame of sticks

As you tie these hitches you start to pull each stitch in the web a little tighter. Continue around the web tying a hitch and pulling tighter on each row until you are down to a small centre hole in your web. Tie it off in a knot.

Now tie three strands of yarn from the ‘bottom’ of the triangle and attach the beads, feathers, leaves – And tie a hanging loop at the top of the triangle and you are ready to decorate the trees by hanging your wonderful dream catchers in the forest – or, if you REALLY want to catch those dreams in your web, hang your natural dream catcher up in your bedroom for a real conversation starter!

Sleep well, and sweet dreams.

We would love to see what you create – do tag us on Instagram where you will find our new account https://www.instagram.com/kidschaos_blog/ use the hashtag #31DaysofLearning as we are joining in with KiddyCharts creative STEAM project this month.

Ali also writes over on incredibusy.
Cotton yarn: Wool and the Gang.
Shoot location: fforest, during the fforest gather workshops.

Tap here for a YouTube tutorial of the weave

crafts, gardening with kids, key stage 2

The Main Ingredients To Your Child’s Development

When you are trying to ensure that your child will have a good start in life, it all comes down to their development, and ensuring that this is as strong as can be. There are actually quite a few elements to this that you will need to consider, and it’s important to make sure that you are going to think about early development. A strong early development is the kind of thing that can really help your child in many ways, so it’s definitely important to focus on this.

Pic Source – CCO License

However, you might be wondering what the secret is to your child’s development working out as it should. As it happens, there are a number of ingredients to this that you will want to look out for and actively encourage if you are going to ensure this is going to work as well as possible. So let’s take a look at what those ingredients are and how you can help your child to build them.

Love and Acceptance

This is one of the main things that you will always want to make sure you are providing, as, if there is enough of this, it really will make a huge difference to your child’s life in quite a powerful way. It’s incredible actually, how well this can work, and you should definitely make sure that you are thinking about this if you want to try and encourage your child to develop as fully as possible. Love and acceptance are going to mean that pretty much everything else falls into place easily.

Of course, you don’t need to learn how to love your child, but you will find that the acceptance part can take a while. And what is most important is not only that you are feeling love and acceptance, but that you are actively expressing it to them. This is what will make the difference, and what they will notice, and you will find that it will help with their development more than pretty much anything else at all.

So be sure to express this as early as possible and frequently too. You will find that it’s going to make a world of difference to how effectively they develop.

Encouragement

At every stage of development, no matter what the specific skills are that are being developed, you will need to make sure that you try to encourage your children as best as you can. Encouragement is going to mean that you are much more likely to actively and effectively expect their development to go well. Put simply, children are always going to find that their own development is stronger and better when there is plenty of encouragement from the parent.

Strong encouragement from you means that they are going to feel that anything is possible. Of course, it can take a while to get this right and you might find that you need to figure out for yourself what kinds of encouragement work and what kinds don’t seem to work so well. But all in all, having a strong ability to encourage your child in whatever they are doing is one of the best things you can give them. You will notice the effects of this quickly, and it’s really amazing what it can do for your child in general.

Learning Types

It’s also a good idea to try and figure out the learning types of your child, as everyone has their own combination and this is something that you are going to find really useful to consider. For instance, some people tend to learn better through kinetic movement, and some people find it much easier to learn by rote. Those are just two examples, and perhaps something that you are going to want to help your child to discover for themselves, but the point is that you should be looking out for what their learning type is so that you can hopefully encourage them to make full use of this.

It’s also important to make sure your child has the best possible chance of learning well. So from making use of resources like those available from DoodleLearning to ensuring that you are doing all you can to encourage them, you’ll find that this makes a huge difference overall. It’s absolutely something that will help your child to develop.

The earlier you do this, the more of a positive impact it can have on their own overall development, and it’s really quite incredible how well this can work in the long run. So make sure that you are thinking about this if you want to keep your child’s development as strong as possible, as it’s the kind of thing that is going to be hugely important to them now and later on as well.

Play

People often forget this, but one of the most important ingredients to any development is play. Your child needs to have plenty of play in their life, and this is one of the main things that should be encouraged at every step of the journey. Play is so central, and vitally important to your child’s development that they are simply not going to get anywhere without it. Not only is it enjoyable and fun, it’s also one of the main early ways that children learn, and it’s a naturally powerful way to make use of one’s curiosity in trying to find out more about the world.

With that in mind, it’s really important to make sure that you are encouraging play as much as you can, and that your child is going to be able to make full use of it as a way of being. The more that this is the case, the better that it’s going to be for their development, and it really is incredible how much of a difference this can make.

As it happens, just as there are different learning styles, so too there are a range of play types, and you might want to try and figure out which type your child tends to enjoy the most. They might be able to get more out of that way of playing, as well as trying out some others, so a general awareness of both can be really useful all in all.

Building Blocks of Education

As well as those qualities, there are also a few building blocks to their education which you are going to want to encourage too and which can help a great deal. In fact, you would probably consider these to be absolutely essential if you are going to try and ensure your child’s development is as strong as possible. That’s the kind of thing that you should absolutely make sure you are not overlooking if you can help it.

These include basic numeracy skills as well as early literacy skills too. That is the kind of thing that you are going to want to think about, and it’s vital that you are going to try and do all you can to keep this as strong as possible. The building blocks of education are going to be really important for you to think about, so make sure that you are.

Those are the main ingredients to your child’s development you will want to encourage.

This is a collaborative post.

crafts, father's day, FREE printables, kids

Tin Can crafts – savings tin

How about a Tin Can Savings Tin?

With Father’s Day looming, we decided to do something a bit different for Dad and as one of his foibles is collecting coins. *Saving* £2 coins in piles around the house, particularly on shelves… So we came up with a genius tidy-up plan…tin can fathers day savings

We decided to tidy up the favourite shelf for Mr.KidsChaos, our bedroom mantle piece.To assist with the tidying, we made him some Savings Tins, and they look nice too don’t you think?

Can we call this photo a #Shelfie?
Our bedroom ‘Shelf’ is often very cluttered, with our favourite wedding pressie painting from Jill Barker & Jonathan at Middlewick, and the odd pair of his daft colourful sunglasses. His collection of coins tumble constantly, as they get knocked and fall to the floor and it makes me go a little crazy!!

FREE printable tin can printThe kids decided he needed somewhere to save his £2 coins, and told me what the text should read on the tin cans. They picked the colours, and I designed the graphics. Bonus is, you can print these off and do the same thing too, for FREE!

Simply print them off here, and trim them out, and glue them on to your clean tin cans.

Don’t tell him, but I often BORROW the odd coin when we’re dashing off to Martial Arts club, or Cubs…. Sssh, he never reads this anyway, he’ll NEVER know. Perhaps if he saves enough, I could BORROW some of it for a bit of Bathroom DIY…watch this space!

For more FREE printables for tin cans, click here for a fun game for the summer – kick the can.

For more FREE Father’s Day Printables, try our Monster Truck card and Jigsaw Puzzle Cards.

And other uses for bean tins, and soup cans can be seen over on A Greener Life For Us, using up old paint to make plant and pencil pots click here.

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on instagram, Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!

Ali also writes over on AGreenerLifeforus.com

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

spiral flowers newspaper

Fairy Tale crafts – taking inspiration from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves we decided to upcycle a charity shop mirror and create the famous Mirror Mirror on the Wall….

This was a fabulous team effort, and my son now proudly has this Fairy Tale Craft beauty hanging on the wall in his bedroom.

You will need:

Old sheets of newspaper
Cocktail stick
Glue stick
Stronger glue, (I recommend a glue gun!)

Instructions:

1) Roll the newspaper sheet diagonally from the corner, using the cocktail stick to get you started, so that the roll is nice and tight. When the cocktail stick starts to disappear inside the paper, gently pull it out, and continue to tightly roll the newspaper to create a long ‘stick’ – the first of MANY!

2) Flatten the ‘stick’ using a hard surface.

3) Taking your cocktail stick, start to roll the flattened ‘stick’ into a tight spiral, securing it with glue as you get to the end of the spiral.

4) When you have enough of these spirals, you can start to build up the pattern around the mirror – we found that the glue gun was the best tool for this!

KidsChaos-Mirror-paper-spirals-selfie

You could also spray paint the spirals, however we like the newspaper spirals in their natural form!

KidsChaos-newspaper-flowers

 Ali also blogs over on incredibusy.com and is a new lover of Instagram too… pop over and say hello! And I’ll be adding this to Lizzie’s#MagpieMonday as I love to salvage, upcycle and re-use stuff!

Fairytale KidsChaos RedTedArt Video

If you’d like to see more Fairy Tale crafts, firstly pop over to see our Jack and the Beanstalk Reward Chart, and then click the youtube link here, as I got together with Missie Lizzie who talked magic beans, Anthea with her elves’ shoes, Kelly talked Rapunzel, and Maggy at Red Ted Art (talking three little pigs) who hosted a Fairy Tale Craft google+ hangout.

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

Chaos writes:

kidschaos-dragon-shadow-puppetHere’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).

KidsChaosRedTedArt screen grabAttach 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)

cooking with kids, crafts, gardening, gardening with kids

Bird Feeder Orange Half and Peanut Butter

DIY Bird feeder from half an orange

We have always been big ‘bird’ fans (no, not BIGBird, as in the Sesame Street character, although that has always quite amused…) – As a child we fed the birds in the garden at home, with various bird houses, structures and fat and seed balls, watching to see if the naughty squirrels had somehow managed to nab the grub before the bluetits could get to it!Bird Feeder Orange and Peanut Butter

Bird-Feeder-Peanut-Butter-ingredients-KidsChaos
So we wanted to share this easy birdfeeder with you –

you will need:

half an orange

some peanut butter

some bird seed…

string – (we love the baker’s twine!)

Bird-Feeder-Peanut-Butter-pierce-the-sides-KidsChaos

Scoop out the content of the orange (we have a smoothie every day, so we added the orange to that).

Spread some peanut butter into the orange skin, and add the seeds.

Pierce holes in the side of the orange skin ‘cup’ – actually do this BEFORE you add the peanut butter and seeds!

Thread string, and hang on tree…

We’ve also done this with a toilet roll – can you believe! Click here to read more and here for more fab bird feeder ideas.

Ali also blogs over on Incredibusy.com and is a lover of Instagram… pop over and say hello to us on @kidschaos_blog too!

crafts, google+ hangouts

Easy heart print wrapping paper tutorial

heart print wrapping paperHeart print wrapping paper, and gift wrap in general, can be expensive to buy, so we do make a LOT of home made paper – this heart print wrapping paper is so easy to do, and great for birthdays as well as Valentine’s Day.

We use the end of a toilet roll tube to do these (squeeze the end of the circular opening flat, and then bend in the top section to create a heart shape). Dipping the tube into the red and pink paint and printing onto the brown parcel paper, which can be bought fairly economically from office supply shops. Alternatively, we have also used metal heart shaped cookie cutters – (see photo, we used the same cookie cutter for our Plum Pie recipe) which works just as well… if a little less organically!

Heart print wrapping paperUsing butcher’s string is another way to make the parcel look really special, particularly if you attach a home-made gift tag, which we created at the same time, using the off-cuts of the heart print wrapping paper… gently fold the printed hearts down the middle to cut a nice symmetrical heart shape and attach with the butcher’s string – lovely!

We created heart print gift tags, and greetings cards, at the same time as the heart print wrapping paper, to have a full set… and even print some extra to keep in the cupboard for that unexpected party or to use to send a pressie to Granny!

If a Plum Pie recipe is not your thing, try our Cake in a Mug, click through to Ali’s other blog aGreenerLifeforus.com

redtedart-hangout-valentines-dayFor more Valentine’s Day inspiration, try my easy to make hand in heart cards, and FREE Printable jigsaw puzzle piece crafts Valentine’s greetings cards and check out our Google+ hangout hosted by Red Ted Art, featuring  Kelly from domesticgoddesque.com with her glitter heart cake toppers Lizzie with her  missielizzie-meandmyshadow.blogspot.co.uk rustic twig heart wreaths and her silver birch bark candle – amazing… Plus Anthea’s needle felt hearts and Maggy’s collection of Valentines Day craft ideas.

Oh, and I’m on twitter.com/MoreKidsChaos too… Erm, and funnily enough on Facebook and Pinterest! Pop over to say hello x Like it? Pin it!