Features of handmade Christmas tree decorations

A Christmas tree decorated with toys is the main attribute of the New Year and Christmas. The most valuable are toys made by yourself. Creating them is like writing the history of your own family. And when you take out beautiful little things from the box once a year, created by your own hands and by the hands of children, you remember the most pleasant moments of life spent in the circle of relatives.

The first tree was decorated for the holiday as early as Christmas 1500 in Germany. She was decorated with candles. Then a tradition arose to decorate the top of the spruce with a star, and the branches - with apples and gingerbread. Along with edible decorations, paper flowers appeared on the forest beauty.

Glass decorations "settled" on the tree at the end of the 17th century. There is a legend that they tried to make an artificial version of the apple out of glass, when the harvest of these fruits happened, and there was simply nowhere to take the usual decorations.

The tradition of setting up and decorating holiday trees came to Russia through German families who lived in St. Petersburg at the end of the 18th century.

The most fashionable decorations for the holiday tree in those days were cones and icicles, various animals made of shortcrust pastry wrapped in foil.

Not only ordinary people who made handmade Christmas tree decorations for their home, but also handicraft artels engaged in small-scale production, took up the production. They used various fabrics, cotton wool and papier-mâché as materials for toys. You could also buy German-made toys. It was only after the First World War that the industrial production of glass balls for Christmas trees began in Russia.

In Soviet times, Christmas itself was outlawed. Only in the mid-thirties they found a worthy justification for Christmas paraphernalia, declaring it New Year's. People were given the legal right to decorate Christmas trees and create a festive mood.

New Year tree decorations of the Soviet period were distinguished by a variety of themes. Along with the traditional Santa Claus and the Snow Maiden made of glass, an astronaut appeared on a spruce branch.

Nowadays, on the shelves of shops in the pre-New Year period, you can see real masterpieces of Christmas tree decorations - the same glass balls, painted under Khokhloma, Palekh and Gzhel.

There is a separate category of limited edition collectible toys. Unique things for the Christmas tree are made of glass, high quality porcelain. Precious metals are also used to crunch. These unique pieces have their own numbers and certificates of authenticity.

All this is side by side with inexpensive Chinese goods. Such toys do not break, but they are not particularly pleasing with their cheap brilliance. If you don't have the money for balls decorated with paintings made by a professional artist, or for other unique items, you can make your tree stand out on your own.

These can be simple decorations from what is in any home:

• yarn;
• glue;
• wire;
• light bulbs;
• beads;
• beads;
• colored ribbons and bows;
• plastic bottles;
• cardboard;
• colored paper;
• twine;
• napkins;
• pieces of fabric, felt;
• cotton wool and other soft fillers.

You can also make porcelain toys.And from home-made porcelain. To create it, PVA glue, corn starch, glycerin, citric acid and hand cream (without silicone) are taken. All this is mixed in a certain proportion, left for a while, then heated over low heat. The finished dough is placed in a plastic bag, pre-treated with cream, sealed and put away in a cold place for eight hours. After that, toys can be sculpted from the resulting mass, then covering them with acrylic paints.

It is rather difficult to create balls or other glass shapes at home. This requires a certain skill and special equipment.

Some exclusive Christmas tree decorations can be made without any difficulty, with almost no DIY skills. For example, take a beautiful pine cone, glue beads and beads on it with a glue gun, varnish and sprinkle with sparkles. It remains to attach the thread, and the decoration for the Christmas tree is ready.

To paint the ball with paints, you need, in addition to the very basis for painting, to have:

• medium hard pencil;
• gum;
• acrylic paints;
• brushes;
• water;
• a piece of cloth.

It is preferable to choose a glass ball for work, and not a plastic one, since the plastic one can see the seam at the place where the hemispheres are combined. The product should be matte and large in size, then it is convenient to paint it.

With good artistic skills, you can try to apply a drawing to the workpiece according to your own design. Another option is to make a copy from an image spied on a postcard or in a magazine.

First, a future drawing is outlined with a dotted line. Do this without pressure, so as not to break the base.

A small amount of paints is applied to a palette or just white paper and mixed to get suitable shades. Painting should be done gradually, allowing the paints to dry, otherwise they will smear.

Some parts of the drawing during the painting can be emphasized with sparkles. They must be applied before the paint sets.

Upon completion of all work, the ball remains suspended, allowing it to dry completely.

If there is a strong doubt about your own artistic abilities, the spot painting technique is suitable for work. By applying paints in small dots according to a predetermined pattern or by creating an abstract ornament from circles or stars, you can make a unique decoration for the Christmas tree.

From the remnants of the fabric, you can make cute decorations in the form of different shapes - a heart, an asterisk, a New Year's sock, a deer. It is quite possible to draw the blanks yourself, or you can download them on the Internet and print them.

It remains to make a pair of rag patterns and sew them together, leaving a small hole in order to fill with padding polyester or holofiber. You need to stuff toys tightly. You can use a pencil. After that, sew on a loop so that it is convenient to hang it on a branch.

A variety of fabrics are suitable for creating such toys. The more colorful the better. The seam can be made on a typewriter from the inside, or it can be done from the outside.

Felt is also a good idea. Creative stores sell special sheets of this material. This type of textile comes in different thicknesses. There are very thin, and there are dense options for felt that keep their shape perfectly. When combined in one product, one or another effect is achieved. You can also use felt of different colors, with images, for example, in peas or a check.

As in the case of toys made from ordinary fabric, patterns are made from thick paper., paired elements are cut out along them, which are connected with a thread and a needle, and then the resulting toy is stuffed with filler.

With the help of buttons, beads, ribbons, small multi-colored felt elements, it is easy to add visual volume and elegance to this or that decoration.

You will learn more about how to make Christmas tree decorations in the following video.