I absolutely love the holidays and always enjoy making them a special time for our family. This year will be no exception. I wanted to reach out and send some love to our extended families, so we decided to create some very special homemade Christmas gifts for grandparents from grandchildren.
We absolutely love making ornaments and thought these would be the perfect homemade gift. Not only are they super simple to make, we also had so much fun creating them!
Before we dive into it, be sure to get your FREE Sample from Christmas School! It includes the topic all about reindeer and some beautiful watercolor vocabulary cards as well. Grab the sample below, and if you love it—which I know you will!—you can get the full version right here: https://shop.howweelearn.com/products/christmas-school
Homemade Christmas Gifts for Grandparents from Grandchildren
MATERIALS
- Flour
- Salt
- Water
- Rolling pin
- Cookie Cutters
- Paint
- Ribbon
- Glitter and markers for decorating
MAKING THE DOUGH
I think my favorite part of these salt dough ornaments for grandparents is making the dough, because it is just sooo easy. Mix one cup of salt with two cups of flour. Once those two ingredients are mixed, add a little bit of water at a time and knead together until mixture forms a dough, and then… voila, you have salt dough!
We enjoyed playing with the dough a little before rolling it out to create our handmade Christmas gifts for grandparents. It is just so fun squishing and rolling the dough. I’m not sure who had more fun, myself or my little one?
CREATING the ORNAMENTS
There are so many ways to make these ornaments special. Knowing our families the way we do, any homemade Christmas gifts from grandchildren would be incredibly well received. I allowed my little one to choose the shapes he wanted, and I was super pleased with his choices.
A lot of thought went into his choices. He thought for a bit and decided carefully before he chose a tree because: “That’s Christmas!” He chose a star because: “Stars are shiny and beautiful.” He chose a heart because: “I love my grandparents with all my heart!” With the heart, I decided to add a photo of my son to personalize the ornament a little more.
There was one more ornament I wanted to add because I am incredibly sentimental and knew it would mean a great deal. Fortunately for me, he agreed and loved the idea. I chose to create a snowman family using my son’s handprint. So cute, right? I absolutely love when I do crafts with handprints as it adds a very special touch. This was a combined effort but I am so happy we did this one. I know that my son’s homemade Christmas gifts will really let these special people know just how much they are loved and cared about.
After rolling out the dough, my little one cut out the shapes and then we set them aside to dry on a piece of wax paper. I highly recommend getting started on these handmade salt dough ornaments for grandparents as far ahead of time as possible, as the drying process takes about 4-7 days. I know that you can also bake them for a quicker readiness time, but I was a little nervous they would crack and didn’t want to take any chances.
While you’re waiting for these to dry, why not check out this adorable wrapping paper craft? It would be the perfect way to wrap these handmade Christmas gifts for grandparents.
PAINT TIME
Once the ornaments are completely dry, you are ready to paint. This part was super fun. My little guy picked his colours and off he went. While using many colours can be nice, my little one still mixes his colours, which makes everything brown. Since I wanted to keep things simple, I decided that using one colour for each ornament would be best. Again, set aside a day or so to allow these homemade ornaments to dry completely.
DECORATIONS
We really wanted to make these homemade Christmas ornaments extra special and sparkly. The best way to do that is to add a little glitter! Since we wanted the sparkle without the mess all over the place, we added mod podge overtop of the glitter. This really helps to seal seal in the glitter and as a bonus, it also adds some shine. We decided to leave this to dry for another day or so before adding the ribbon.
SPECIAL GIFT
Once you have wrapped your ornament and added a tag or card, you are all set for the delivery! While the whole process itself takes a bit of time to dry, it is really a simply craft that we had so much fun creating together. We are certain that these homemade Christmas gifts for grandparents from grandchildren will brighten their holiday as much as making them did ours.
Happy Holidays, everyone!
Joanna is a full-time teacher and part-time mompreneur with a personalized and custom gift shop. She has a passion for writing and loves creating wonderful memories for her 3 beautiful children. As a huge fan of Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus, Joanna lives by her biggest lesson: “Take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!” You can find her on Facebook.
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