I will admit right up front that I don’t have a lot of experience with decoupage, so this craft was a little hit and miss for me at first. Once I saw how beautifully these handmade Christmas ornaments turned out, however, I decided that I’d probably be willing to give decoupage a second chance! This is one of those crafts that I did with my preschooler while also making a more “grown up” version. I’ll share both here.
For these handmade decoupaged fabric Christmas ornaments, you will need:
- 3″ Styrofoam balls
- decoupage medium/glue
- fabric scraps
- paint brush
- ribbon
- skewer
- embellishments
Basic craft supplies for homemade Christmas ornaments.
To start, push a skewer through the Styrofoam ball. This gives you a way to hold it without decoupaging yourself to within an inch of your life. You can also stick the bottom of the skewer into a foam wreath so your Christmas ornaments can dry and to hold them still when you decorate them.
This is where things get a little sticky.
Next, brush decoupage medium onto the foam ball. Place fabric scraps onto the ball, brushing more medium over them. Continue to do this, overlapping fabric wherever you need to, until the entire ball is covered. Set it aside to dry for a couple of hours.
The Christmas ornament on the left is dry, and the one on the right is wet.
Once the ornament is dry, you can add a ribbon for a hanger.
I removed the skewer and then used it to push a very thin red ribbon through. I then tied some small jingle bells to the end to keep it from pulling back out.
After that, you can embellish as you wish.
My preschooler directed me as I hot glued buttons and pom-poms all over her Christmas ornament.
A simple bow was enough for my handmade Christmas ornament.
What I Learned the Hard Way: I used fabric scraps that were left over from the scrap fabric Christmas wreath we made, thinking it would be great to have these ornaments match the wreath. That worked out well, but I discovered that 2″ square pieces of fabric were too big. I ended up cutting the squares into quarters so the cloth would lay better on the round ball.
into my own Christmas stocking this year!). When you score these folds, your fold lines are effortlessly crisp and exact. I never thought the extra step was worth it, until I tried it. Now I never fold paper crafts without scoring first! And actually, it makes the folding easier and faster, so it doesn’t really seem like an ‘extra step’ at all.
