EASY DIY VINTAGE STYLE ORNAMENTS FOR CHRISTMAS

Today?

Today is all about DIY Christmas ornaments in a cute vintage style.

And?

About my rekindled love for all things old, tattered, French and vintage.

One day I sat down in my craft room and started playing. Playing with scraps of paper and fabric, with vintage style Christmas cards, with ribbon, buttons, and trinkets. And there it was again. My love for that mixed media style of crafting. And the result of an evening of Christmas craft fun I present today: my DIY vintage paper Christmas decorations.

These are so easy to make, and of course if vintage isn’t really your thing the principle would work well for just about any style and color scheme.

How to Make DIY Vintage Christmas Decorations

For these vintage-style Christmas ornaments, you will need mostly scraps of paper and fabric and some vintage Christmas graphics.

You can use real vintage Christmas cards, new Christmas cards with pretty vintage scenes, or you can look online for images that you like and print them out on sturdy paper.

I started out by thinking up a bit of a theme. Like my base is going to be this piece of canvas, and I’ll add mostly fabric scraps. Or I have this paper star made from music paper what background would go with that?

Gather some materials and lay them out together to see how they match. If there is harmony among the materials: go with it. Otherwise, keep changing them out until you like the collection.

Materials for DIY Victorian Christmas Decorations

The materials I used for making these unique handmade Christmas ornaments are very basic. Gather some papers like a bit of cardboard for the backing, pages from old books, music paper, pretty (vintage) Christmas cards or photographs, and some old Christmas cards you can cut the good luck wishes from.

Then rummage through your stash and collect bits of fabric, ribbon, lace, burlap, and twine.

For the extra decorations, I used buttons, some broken pieces of jewelry, and some evergreen Christmas sprigs I cut from a garland.

If you have the following in your general craft supplies gather them too

sharp craft scissors

craft glue (preferably a fast drying one)

pinking shears

circular punch

Layer it all out together until you like what you see. Don't start gluing it all too soon. You might change your mind.

Keep fiddling and foofing until you are sure you have reached your perfectly imperfect best. Then glue it all down.

Making these DIY vintage-inspired Christmas ornaments is all about having fun in the process. Working with old and tattered materials means there is no need for perfection. In fact, making sure the edges are a bit rough is all the better. Tear your bits of paper to size, ruffle the edges of your fabric, crumple the paper you use for the base and hide your lack of cutting skills by using pinking shears.

If you like vintage and/or upcycled Christmas decorations: check out this collection of the best repurposed Christmas decor you can DIY.

And then subtract one thing. Trust me you usually need to take away one thing you added to really finish it off without overcrowding your design.

I used plain old craft glue for just about all of the assembling of the cards. With the exception of the last one. I stitched some vintage pipe cleaners to the edge of the card with a blanket stitch.

If you are looking for more homemade Christmas decor ideas find some true gems here in this collection of over 50 DIY Christmas ideas.

And there you have it. A fun way to make Christmas decorations out of paper and to use old vintage greetings cards. You’ll never have to wonder again what to do with old Christmas cards that are too beautiful to throw out.