Cheap Christmas Crafts for Kids From Things You Already Own
Cheap Christmas crafts for kids made from paper, jam jars, salt dough and the recycling bag: tree decorations, cards and wrapping, sorted by age and mess.
By Gemma Hayes 11 November 2026
The cheapest Christmas crafts for kids are made from five things most homes already have: plain paper, jam jars, flour and salt, string, and whatever is in the recycling bag. Between them you get paper chains, snowflakes, salt dough tree decorations, lantern jars, cards and home-printed wrapping paper. Start in mid-November and the crafts become your decorations, your cards and your gift wrap, so you make them once and skip buying all three. Everything below is sorted by how much mess it makes, calmest first.
Before you start: raid the recycling, not the shops
Christmas crafts have a trap that Halloween crafts don’t. The shops are full of glitter kits in November, and every one of them is a cardboard sleeve around things you already own.
So spend ten minutes collecting first:
- Paper: printer paper, old magazines, last year’s wrapping paper if you kept it, brown paper from parcels.
- Card: cereal boxes, the fronts of last year’s Christmas cards, kitchen roll tubes.
- Jars: clean jam jars with the labels soaked off.
- Kitchen cupboard: plain flour, table salt, a potato.
- The odds drawer: string, wool, buttons, a hole punch, scissors, a pencil.
Put it all in one box. That box is the craft cupboard from now until Christmas, and it goes back under the bed when tea needs the table.
Paper crafts: free and almost no mess
Paper chains. Cut strips about two fingers wide, loop one, glue it, thread the next through. Magazine pages make a brighter chain than plain paper and cost nothing.
Paper snowflakes. Fold a circle of white paper in half, in half again and once more, snip shapes out of the folded edges, and open it. Every one is different. Stick them to the window with a dab of glue stick.
Paper-plate or cereal-box wreath. Cut a ring from card. Draw round small hands on green paper (or white paper coloured in), cut the hands out, and glue them round the ring with the fingers pointing outwards. Red buttons or scrunched red paper make the berries.
Cards from last year’s cards. Cut the picture off the front of an old card and glue it onto folded paper. Children who can’t draw a robin yet can still choose one, stick it and write their name. That covers the class cards without buying a box.
Salt dough tree decorations: the ones that last
If you only do one thing on this list, do this one. Salt dough is plain flour, table salt and water, and the decorations keep for years.
The short version:
- Make the dough and roll it to about the thickness of a pound coin.
- Cut shapes with biscuit cutters, or cut round a glass for baubles and use a knife for stars and trees.
- Make the hole for the string before it goes in the oven. A straw or a pencil does it. This is the step everyone forgets, and you can’t add it afterwards.
- Bake low and slow, then leave until completely cool.
- Paint, thread with string or wool, and hang.
I’m not repeating the quantities and oven times here, because the full salt dough recipe has them, along with the reasons a batch puffs up or cracks. Read the baking section before you turn the oven on. The usual mistake is the oven being too hot.
Jar and tube crafts: a bit more mess
Snowy lantern jars. Tear white paper or tissue into small pieces and stick them all over the outside of a jam jar with glue. Pop a battery tea light inside. A row of them on the windowsill looks properly Christmassy at four o’clock when it’s already dark.
Use battery tea lights, never real candles, for anything a child has made and will want to carry. Keep the small round batteries well out of reach of anyone who still puts things in their mouth.
Kitchen roll tube trees. Squash the tube flat, cut it into rings, and glue the rings into a triangle on card: one at the top, two below, three below that. Paint it green or leave it brown.
The walk-then-craft version of all this is in my autumn crafts post.
Printed wrapping paper: the messiest and the most useful
Potato-print wrapping paper. Cut a potato in half. An adult cuts a simple star or tree into the flat face with a small knife. Brush on paint, then stamp it all over brown parcel paper or the plain side of old wrapping paper. Let it dry flat on the floor overnight.
This is the craft that saves real money, because it turns into the wrapping for every present your child gives.
Gift tags. Use the same potato stamp on cereal-box card, cut round the print, punch a hole and thread string through.
Which craft for which age
| Age | Best picks | Your job |
|---|---|---|
| Under 3 | Handprint wreath, salt dough prints, stamping | Hold the paint; keep buttons and batteries away |
| 3 to 5 | Paper chains, lantern jars, potato printing | Do the cutting |
| 6 to 8 | Snowflakes, cards from old cards, tube trees | Stand back |
| 9 and up | Gift tags, running the paper chain “factory” | Make the tea |
With mixed ages, give the oldest a job with a title. “Head of cutting” works on my eldest every single time.
What to buy, if anything
Honestly, very little. A glue stick is the one thing we always run out of in December, so I buy a multipack such as the Pritt Stick 43g five-pack and hide four of them. White and green poster paint and a pack of battery tea lights cover the rest, and the tea lights come back out every year.
The thing to leave on the shelf is the boxed craft kit. You are paying for the box.
When to make them
Mid to late November is the right time. Do the salt dough first, because it needs baking, cooling and painting on separate days. Paper chains and snowflakes can go up the weekend you decorate. Cards need doing before the last week of term. Wrapping paper waits until you have something to wrap.
Spread out like that, it’s one craft per wet weekend until the holidays, which is most of my December plan. The rest of it is in my Christmas on a budget post. If you made the Halloween crafts last month, you already know the system. It’s the same box with red and green in it.
FAQ
What Christmas crafts can kids make with things from around the house?
Paper chains, paper snowflakes, a handprint wreath, cards cut from last year’s cards, salt dough tree decorations, jam jar lanterns, kitchen roll tube trees and potato-printed wrapping paper. They need paper, card, jars, flour, salt, string and glue.
What are easy Christmas crafts for toddlers?
Stamping and pressing. Potato printing, a handprint wreath and pressing a hand into salt dough all work for under-threes with an adult holding the paint. Keep buttons, beads and tea light batteries off the table at that age, because they’re small enough to choke on.
How do you make salt dough Christmas decorations?
Mix plain flour, table salt and water into a firm dough, roll it out, cut shapes, and poke a hole for the string before baking. Bake at a low temperature until hard, cool completely, then paint. My salt dough recipe post has the exact quantities and times.
When should we start Christmas crafts?
Mid-November. Salt dough decorations need a few days from baking to painting, and school cards are needed before the end of term. Starting early also means the crafts are the decorations, so you don’t buy any.
More Rainy Day Activities this way.
