First aid kit: our top ten essential natural items
There are some really cool, funky, pretty, original and most importantly festive ideas on how you can decorate with repurposed household items. At the School of Natural Health Sciences we are all about living a healthy lifestyle, so finding ecological and economical ways to spruce up your place for the season was too good not to share!
1-Bottle Cap Snowmen Ornaments
(courtesy of oneartsymama.com)
Materials:
- bottle caps
- white, black, orange, and red acrylic paint
- paintbrushes
- ribbon
- hot glue gun and glue sticks
- buttons
- scissors
- optional: glitter
STEP 1: Paint the inside of each bottle cap white. It’s a little tricky getting it to coat completely, so you’ll probably need to so several coats, letting it dry in between. You can paint the outsides too if you really want, but we didn’t.
STEP 2: Glue three bottle caps to a piece of ribbon. You’ll also want to put a bit of glue in between each bottlecap to hold them together. Form a loop with the top of the ribbon and glue in place.
STEP 3: Use the end of a paintbrush or a toothpick to paint eyes, a nose, mouth and buttons on your snowmen. Once they were dry, I added some sparkle Mod Podge to mine.
STEP 4: Tie a ribbon or yarn between the first and second bottle caps to make a scarf and accent with a button if you like.
2-Wine Cork Christmas Tree Craft
(courtesy of pinkwhen.com)
The first thing you will need to do is either drink 26 bottles of wine, or order yourself some wine corks online. I am sure if you do a google search you will be able to find a few of these. Of course, ordering them will not be as much fun, but it may also take you quite some time to go through 26 bottles of wine!
- 26 wine corks (makes two trees)
- hot glue gun
- mod podge
- glitter
- one empty toilet paper roll
- twine
STEP 1: The first thing you want to do to make these wine cork Christmas Trees is wet the tip of the cork with a little dab of mod podge and then dip them in your glitter of choice. Allow these to dry for a few hours.
STEP 2: Once your glitter is dry, place your wine corks together and start making your trees. I stacked them up like this:
3 corks for the bottom row (hot glue together)
4 corks for the next row (hot glue together)
3 corks (hot glue together)
2 corks (hot glue together)
1 cork (hot glue together)
STEP 3: Take the toilet paper roll and cut off about a 2 inch high piece. Take your hot glue and wrap your twine around the roll until it is completely covered. Using your hot glue, attach the twine covered roll to the base of your tree.
STEP 4: Once you have attached the roll and corks, decorate with ribbon and paper to top it off, or to keep things simple like I did, add a little button to the top.
These are such cute little Christmas trees, and such a fun and easy project to make!
3-Wooden Clothespin Snowflakes
For one snowflake you will need 8 wooden clothespins, some yarn (or ribbon), a hot glue gun, paint (I used some white Gesso) and 4 buttons/magnets or other embellishments. Just disassemble the clothespins first and glue them together, back to back. Don’t forget to add the yarn or ribbon on one of the clothespins, otherwise you won’t be able to put them up. (courtesy of pinkwhen.com)
4-Pretty Paper Tree
I just love the simplistic yet delicate look of this paper Christmas tree. You don’t have to hack up a beloved book – just use any paper that you may have lying around, such as junk mail or old newspapers. You can get real inventive with it and lace some tinsel around the edges, or colour the paper first, or, use some glue & glitter for a really fabulous result! (courtesy of imperfecthomemaking.com)
5-Wine Cork Wreath
You’ll need a foam or straw wreath form (start small unless you have 100s of corks!), lots and lots of wine corks (order online if you can’t find anywhere else) and a hot glue gun.
You are only going to cover one side of the wreath, as the other side needs to be flat so that it hangs on the door properly. Use the prettiest side of the cork that you want to display and then apply a generous dab of hot glue to the opposite side and stick to the wreath. Hold the cork in place for a few seconds to help it stick and stay.
Just keep going like this around the wreath angling them differently rather than lining them up side by side. You can start filling in gaps by layering corks on top of others and along the sides. Keep layering until there is very little of the wreath form showing through. You can add any Christmas embellishments, like holly, or sparkly ornaments, then string a pretty ribbon through it and hang. You can use it next year as well just change the ribbon and any other ornaments you want to add. (courtesy of designimprovised.com)
6- Christmas Ornaments from Broken CDs
This last one is courtesy of Crème de la Craft on YouTube and really is our favourite. The light catches these and it sends sparkles around the whole room like a glitter ball! Here’s the step-by-step guide of how to make the coolest looking Christmas ornament’s out of your old unwanted CDs (that are all probably lying around gathering dust and taking up space in your household.)
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