Kids Christmas Craft Decorations

Quick question, are you a decorate as soon as possible Christmas lover or do you stick to 1st December? I’m an early decorator! I love Christmas and I decorate as soon as I possibly can to enjoy the festive feeling as long as I can. I also then pull down my tree the day after Boxing Day because I hate leaving it up until New Years, it’s just too long past Christmas to keep it up! And by then we’ve had an influx of new things and I need to do a major clean and reset and that always involves bringing down all the Christmas stuff!

It is currently September and instead of planning my two October born sons birthday presents and party, I am writing a blog post about Christmas Decorations, I feel like maybe I skipped a step or two! But never-the-less, I am getting this out into the world this year because I made these Christmassy Garlands quite a few years ago (back in 2020) and the time has finally come to share them!

The Idea

This was the first version I created as a little prototype which I turned into a candy cane holder that year! I only made this one about 1.5 meters long and with just two strands of 8ply acrylic yarn held together. The next version I made I did after I learnt this very creative trick of changing your single 8 ply yarn into 3 strands held together without having to ball up three different little balls of yarn. This little hack turns your regular yarn into chunky yarn very quickly and for whatever length you want.

Now this blog post was initially to share with you a few experiments and then let you run with the idea, but while I was experimenting with some tinsel yarn that has been sitting in my stash for 2 years, I came up with a 4 strand braided tinsel garland that looks so cool!

Each of my kids has said oh that’s cool Mummy, with exception of the 2 year old, because toddlers don’t care! I am so happy with the final garland and it will be featured on my Christmas tree this year!

The Experiments

You can see in the picture above I have made a few different garlands to play around with different styles. The top one with the light green is using the bulky yarn hack to create the bulky yarn, in light green, red and white acrylic yarn. I then plaited the chains together to create a long length of garland that can be strung up along the hall way or even wound around your Christmas tree!

I then played around with some Christmas yarn that I found in Spotlight a few years back (middle garland in the above picture). Check out their current selection of Christmassy yarns here. The one pictured above is no longer available but there are some nice ones in stock this year that would make some really pretty garlands.

The third garland with the dark green is simply 3 lengths of chains using the bulky yarn hack and they are then twisted together to create this effect you can see below right.

Which shade of green do you prefer? Initially I loved the light green but I think the dark green just screams Christmas a little bit louder than the light green. The garland on the right needs to be twisted as it is hung up which does make it a little more fiddly than the plaited garland but I do like the effect of the twisting. It reminds me of crepe paper streamers when you twist them as you put them up! The garland on the right also has a white acrylic yarn that has a slight sparkle running through it too, I got it from Spotlight, but like the professional blogger I am, I can’t find that ball band. Sorry!!

The Method & Materials

This craft project is so super simple, the kids will love that they can get involved with it too! All you need to know is how to do a chain stitch. And this doesn’t even need to be done using a crochet hook. The chain stitch can be done with just fingers which is often easier for little kids fingers!

The yarn I used in these videos is this Jolly & Joy Tinsel yarn available at Spotlight. I used a full 50g ball of 4 different colours - red, green, gold and silver.

The first video below shows how I changed my thin yarn to bulky yarn turning it into three strands of yarn without cutting and winding balls. It also shows the chaining process that you can follow using a crochet hook. Here I used a 9mm hook, but depending on what you have access to a 10mm could work, as would an 8mm or even a 6mm. The smaller the hook you choose, the tighter the chains will be. However, because you aren’t working into the chains it doesn’t matter if they are tight or loose, so do what works and what you have access to!

The second video below shows how you can do the chains using just your fingers. This is trickier with 3 strands of yarn, but not impossible, you just have to keep track of the number of strands on your finger. As you can see in the video I struggled a little as I got started with loosing a strand along the way. But it is super easy to pull back a couple of chains and keep going again.

The 4 Strand Braid

Once I had made up 4 long strands using a full 50g skein of the tinsel yarn, I did a 4 strand braid. I have never done one of these before, so I just googled it and handy old you tube helped me pull this together. The trick I found is to bring the right hand strand under, over, under the strands while you are moving it to the left. The strands on the left then just move to the right one place and you start again with the right strand!

You can look back to check your progress by seeing that each colour goes in a zig zag pattern evenly. The colours will also go in order down each side. I know I had to go backwards a few times to correct a few mistakes.

The Winning Design

This right here is my favourite of all these garlands.

I love this, how cool is it!! It doesn’t need any fiddly twisting at all, and it is more interesting than just plain tinsel I think!

Now like the ‘professional’ blogger that I am, I totally pulled my Christmas tree out of storage to be able to take proper photos to show you what it looks like around my tree, and with all my holiday decor. WRONG! I am a totally unprofessional blogger, with no space in her home to be pulling out a Christmas tree in September. So these photos will have to do you until I can update this post with proper photos in November because that’s when the tree will come out for reals.

Yes I could just buy my own tinsel or decorations but if I can get my kids interested in a craft and help them feel the satisfaction that making something gives me, then I’ve won as a Mum that day, and the extra time is worth it!

What do you think? Will you give this kid friendly craft a go in your home to mix up your holiday decorations?