There is something very special about a ‘homemade’ Christmas. Hand-crafted decorations, freshly baked mince pies, and carefully prepared gifts lend a magical feeling to the festive period.
If you choose to take a cottage break at this time of year, you’ll find plenty with warm and welcoming spaces perfect for Christmas games and traditions, and located close to Christmas craft markets where you can pick up decorations and presents to put a smile on the faces of your loved ones.
Why not pack a little craft box to take with you to the cottage too? That way you can make your own extra-special festive items while you’ve got time to take care over them.
We’ve prepared a few ideas to inspire your DIY Christmas crafts below and if you haven't booked a Christmas cottage yet, it's not too late! Take a look at our cottages available for Christmas.
Christmas cottages
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Christmas craft ideas for adults
Natural star
This wonderfully easy Christmas craft is a simple yet absolutely beautiful way to decorate! Collect skinny twigs when you’re out and about on a winter walk, cut them to the same size and arrange them in a star shape. Fasten together with glue, twine or ribbon and add a loop for hanging.
Festive candle holders
For an easy, striking centrepiece or window decoration, pick up a candle holder from a charity shop or craft store and simply decorate it with Christmas crafts. We'd recommend tying on fir tree branches as your base using twine, before adding extra ornaments such as baubles, cinnamon and pine cones. Finish the piece by dusting it with artificial snow and glitter for an extra festive feel.
Felt Snowman decorations
These adorable snowman decorations are ideal Christmas crafts to make during your holiday! Easy and small, you simply cut snowman shapes out of white felt and sew two together around the edge. You can stuff them lightly to plump them up a bit and decorate with buttons, ribbons and sequins.
Make a Christmas wreath
The first thing you'll need is a wreath ring - you cane either get one from a craft shop or make your own by tying willow branches together using twine. It's important that there are gaps so you can attach decorations to your wreath ring.
Next, you'll need the greenery - fir is our top choice for anything Christmas related! Use a twine or glue (or both) to attach fir branches to your wreath ring. Once you can no longer see the weather ring beneath all the greenery, it's time to decorate!
Tie holly, baubles, fake berries, cinnamon sticks and other festive trinkets to your wreath. Whatever you choose to use will make it unique and entirely yours!
Christmas craft ideas for kids
Paper chains
One of the most popular and simple Christmas craft activities perfect for doing with the family, making paper chains will keep children occupied for hours, especially if you ask them to make enough to decorate a room! Help them cut out strips of paper from coloured paper about 3cm wide and 20cm long.
Loop one paper strip into a circle and glue or tape the ends. Loop the next one through and fasten in the same way, repeating the process until the chain is long enough.
Toilet/kitchen roll Christmas characters
Save up your cardboard loo roll holders to make these Christmas characters - kitchen roll holders work too but are a much bigger size.
Get out paints and other craft materials such as pom poms and pipe cleaners. You could collect objects from the garden too and decorate your characters with leaves and twigs for arms. Cardboard and coloured paper are also great resources - especially if you plan to add hats to the characters.
Lay out the materials and let your child to get to work decorating each roll, painting on clothing, faces and whatever else their imagination can dream up! It may be useful to draw the characters first to plan who you're going to make. A few character suggestions include snowmen, Christmas trees, Rudolph and the other reindeer, and of course Santa Claus and Mrs Claus!
Handy paper wreath
You’ll need lots of green paper in different shades and several pairs of willing hands! Let your little ones draw around their hands and carefully cut out each one.
Arrange them on a circular ring of card and stick some red dots on at random to look like berries. You could even add a sprinkling of glitter to make them extra sparkly!
Snowmen friends
Concertina a piece of white paper about 5 cm between each fold. Draw a simple snowman shape on the top of the folded paper, making sure his outstretched arms touch the sides. Cut out carefully and let the little ones loose with glitter, pens and sequins to decorate!
Reindeer plant pot
Pick up a terracotta plant pot and get together a selection of crafts.
You can use googly eyes or make your own eyes out of paper and card to glue on, felt, card or paper cut in a teardrop shape are perfect for your reindeer's ears, and then pipe cleaners can be twisted in all kinds of shapes for the antlers - or simply head outside and choose antler-shaped twigs from the local park!
The final touch is the nose - poms poms are perfect! Choose a red one or dye it red to make Rudolph.
Plan your Christmas getaway!
Now you've got your Christmas arts and crafts plans in order, begin searching for the perfect Christmas holiday cottage. Browse through our collection of wonderful cottages for Christmas all across the UK so you can see the Lake District fells powdered with snow, head to the windswept beaches of Wales' magnificent west coast, or meet reindeer and go skiing up in the Munros of the Scottish Highlands.
Christmas cottages