With Christmas right around the corner it’s a great time for a DIY Christmas decoration tutorial! Courtney decided this year to make her own mantel decorations. We’re always looking for new ideas for around the house, and we hope that you are too! We’ve made a DIY/Tutorial just for this project so let’s jump right in.
For this project she went to a few stores and found all of the pieces she wanted to use to make her decoration. I’ll break down a list of the things needed and a step by step for putting it all together.
Tools You’ll Need
- Hot Glue Gun
- Diagonal Cutters
- Knife (for cutting poster board)
- Tape Measure
Items You’ll Need
- Foam Poster Board
- 4 Foam Craft Disks (4 inch)
- Artificial Flowers
- 3 Glass Cylinder Candle Holders
- 3 Candles For Holders
- Garland
- Small Tree Ornaments
- Misc. Small Christmas Decor
- Red Glitter Bow
Lets Get Started!
The first step is to cut your foam poster board to the size you want to use for your new decoration. Courtney began by cutting her board in half. Each piece ended up being 10″ wide, which turned out to be a good size to start with so that after the decorations were added she could remove any extra poster board that wasn’t needed.
Next, lay out the foam craft disks by centering them on the foam board and measuring each side to be sure they’re in the middle. These disks will give your decoration some height, which will let more of the decorations show because it adds layers to the piece. Once you have the disks in place, hot glue them to the poster board.
After the craft disks are glued down, center the glass candle holders at the point where each disk touches, placing them as evenly as possible. Then hot glue them to the foam to hold them in place. You have now completed the base.
Let’s Decorate!
Now that the base is finished and you can start decorating it, this is where you can add your own touches to the base to really make it your own. You are welcome to do exactly as Courtney has done, but we recommend taking some tips from this project and giving it a twist of your own.
The first decorations to be added are the artificial flowers. These are hot glued to the foam disks all around the candle holders, after cutting the stems off with the diagonal cutters (the flowers used here had metal in the stems). Alternate the flower colors as you work your way around the base, gluing each one down at the plastic of the flower where you cut them, not the flower petals.
Next, take the garland and wrap it around the edges of the foam disks to decorate them as well as hiding the white edges. Start in one of the areas where the disks meet and hot glue the end of the garland in place. Let the glue cool before wrapping it or it will pull out of the corner. Keep it snug against the disk and work your way around the piece, hot gluing it into each of the areas where the disks come together, giving it an even look.
The next pieces that were added after the garland were the snowflakes on each end, followed by hot gluing small round tree ornaments on top of each other between the candle holders to fill in the space. The snowmen were then placed in front of the two outer candles to be a focal point that adds more color into the piece (and because Courtney really liked them!)
(Add more decorations wherever you like. Courtney placed pieces where she thought they’d look best and moved them around until she got the look she wanted.)
Once you’ve finished placing and gluing your decorations onto the base, you’ll want to cut off the extra foam board. Courtney used a utility knife, which made easy work of cutting the board, and carefully cut close to the decorations.
Add a glittery bow to the front to tie it all together and you now have a personalized Christmas decoration that you can show off to your family and friends. The best part is you made this yourself!
This DIY is budget friendly as most of the decorations used can be found at your local dollar stores or Walmart. This same DIY/Tutorial can be used to make a decoration for just about any holiday or season by simply changing out the decorations you use. We hope you enjoyed this post and it was helpful and inspired you to create your own decoration!
If you followed this DIY, leave us comment below and let us know how your project turned out!
Thanks for reading our blog! We hope you got some great information and your project goes well. Feel free to reach out if we can help with anything and we hope to see you again! Good luck with all your future Home-Edits!