Classic children's Christmas crafts

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about classic children's Christmas crafts, sharing some of the fun crafts that I remembered from my childhood. It made me think about how many of my happiest Christmas memories involve the different crafts that we did every year, and I was interested to know whether other people felt the same. So I asked around on Facebook to see what other people remembered about their classic childhood Christmas crafts.

This is the snowman that we made a couple of years ago by sticking cotton wool around a toilet roll tube, and I was pleased to find out that I wasn't the only one that made these when they were little!

Like the toilet roll tube above, lots of our Christmas decorations were made by recycling. I still sit down after Christmas with a big pile of Christmas cards and use pinking shears to cut them all up into gift tags, and I found out that lots of other people do the same!

Another fun thing that I remember making from old wrapping paper is paper chains to decorate the house a few weeks before Christmas. We had them strung up all around the house, I don't think I've seen any as Christmas decorations for years, they've obviously just gone out of fashion as lots of other people remembered making them as children! Sometimes we would use the pre-gummed papers, which as Aly reminded me probably came from Woolworths, and Hannah remembers colouring in strips of paper with pens.

With my Mum's help (and thinking back, she probably used to do most of the work) we used to decorate the many glass panes in our front door with stained glass window decorations. Helen remembers doing that too, as well as using coloured paper to make lanterns. From memory our front door always looked amazing at Christmas. I do remember the year that my Mum presumably tried to simplify things by allowing us to stick cotton wool balls all over the door to represent snow, and all the clean up job that took place afterwards! Now Helen recreates the craft in biscuit form with her stained glass biscuits!

A popular craft that lots of people remembered was folding and cutting up white paper and card to make snowflake decorations. Last year I remember Harry being obsessed with making paper snowflakes, leaving a trail of tiny pieces of cut up paper all over the place. I'm trying to keep quite about it this year!

Not everyone remembers doing much crafting at Christmas, and Aly and Joy make a special effort to do things with their own children. You can see lots of Joy's Christmas crafts on her blog. Like Mary, I also remember making sweets at Christmas, especially peppermint creams. I need to dig out a recipe and make some this year!

I loved reading about everyone's Christmas crafting memories, thank you to everyone that jogged my memory and shared their own memories with me!

Aly from Bug Bird & Bee
Hannah from Cupcake Mumma
Helen from Actually Mummy
Jen P from Smiles & Trials
Jen S from Love Chic Living
Joy from Pink Oddy
Mary from Keynko
Michelle from Mummy from the Heart
Pippa from Red Rose Mummy
Sarah from Mum of Three World
Swazi from Chocolate is not the Only Fruit

and my friends Debbie, Des and Liz.

You might also like this guest post that my Mum wrote for me a couple of years back sharing her memories of a 1950's Christmas - she made paper chains too!

Do you have any stories of your favourite childhood Christmas crafts? I'd love to hear them!