Christmas crafts for adults to try this festive season

Christmas crafting is one of the best ways to spend Christmas 2021. Pick a project from our easy, step-by-step guides to start making fabulous Christmas arts and crafts, decorations and handmade Christmas gifts that your friends and family will love. 

Christmas is here, so shops are reeling us in with their Christmas adverts, sparkling lights and ornate, festive displays. Despite the fact we can all enjoy a spot of Christmas shopping, nothing sums up the spirit of the season more than lovingly-gifted handmade gifts, decorations and treats.

Not only is embarking on a daily craft decorations project a cosy way to spend a winter evening; handmade Christmas gifts are also a more sustainable way to tell your friends and family you love them and to decorate your home as the festivities get underway. 

After last year’s damp squib of a festive season, handmade gifts are also a heartfelt and meaningful way to tell your friends and family how much they mean to you as we’re (hopefully) reunited this Christmas.

Whether you’re looking to craft your own Christmas wreath, make your own Christmas candles to place on a sparkling Christmas table or make personal, handmade gifts for your loved ones, there are plenty of Christmas arts and crafts to keep you busy this festive season.  

Take a look at our list of daily use decorations ideas you can easily try your hand at – from decorations for your home and Christmas food and drinks to fun gift ideas. Rest assured, you won’t be making any old stocking fillers. All our guides will show you how to make trending and useful crafts, from stylish dried flower wreaths and Instagram-approved painted candles to collaged Christmas cards and festive sloe berry gin.

Whether you’re a crafting fanatic looking for new ideas or a beginner searching for easy to make arts and crafts that will still look slick and professional, you’ve come to the right place. Merry Christmas and happy crafting.

Give a truly heartfelt Christmas present this year by making your very own gifts by hand. Not only will your loved ones appreciate them so much more, it also means you can make your presents as eco-friendly as possible (there’ll be no excess cardboard or shrink-wrap on these bespoke gifts). 

Whether you want to make traditional festive favourites to spread some cheer this season, or you’d prefer to home craft decoration fun items that your friends and family will be able to keep forever, there’s a craft on our list for you. 

Christmas is a time to wine and dine. But, instead of automatically going to the supermarket for all your culinary needs, why not try making your favourite festive snack and treats instead. Handmade food and drink is also a great gift idea. 

From festive tipples to foodie gifts that your friends and family will be able to use all year round, these easy how-to guides will keep you busy this Christmas. 

Christmas means decking your halls with soft twinkling lights and bright, colourful decorations. Whether you’re looking to level up your Christmas tablescaping game this year with handmade candles and lovingly crafted placemats or you’re after some stunning floral arrangements to bring the festive vibes, there’s a crafting guide here for you. 

With winter break upon us and Christmas just around the corner, it’s time to embrace the festive spirit of the season. Escape the chilly weather by staying indoors and crafting with your kids. Christmas crafts are a great way to entertain your little ones while letting them release their creativity.

We have 50 easy Christmas crafts for kids at every skill level. Need to decorate your Christmas tree? There are fun Christmas tree ornament ideas that your kids will be excited to hang up. Looking for a personalized Christmas gift you can give to family? Try creating a snow globe or themed treat.

Once you decide on a craft to make, pair it with light up Christmas decorations to give your home the complete cozy Christmas feel.

The festive season is the perfect time for some do-it-yourself fun with the kids, who love cutting paper and using glue to create magical shapes. Get creative making stars, ornaments to decorate the tree. Children will get a sense of pride and achievement seeing the handmade decorations on the festive tree. Here, we show how you can make a paper tree and decorations.

Make cones out of all the papers. You will require about six to seven sheets of each colour. Now, stick the cones together, starting from the bottom with the largest cone and ending with the smallest on top. After sticking all the cones now make a star and stick it. You can attach a ribbon, so that you can use it to hang on the tree.

From making your fireplace more festive to crafting one-of-a-kind ornaments and trimming your Christmas craft decorations, our holiday craft projects will help you creatively take your home from ho-hum to ho-ho-ho! Get crafting to deck out every area with DIY Christmas decorations that perfectly showcase your personal seasonal style.

For many, it (wrongly) contained connotations of amateurism, appearing homespun and deeply unfashionable.

Scroll forward to the present and things look very different. Tom Daley made headlines at the Olympics, not only for winning medals but also for knitting a commemorative cardigan while supporting Team GB in the stands.

Our TV schedules are overrun with shows devoted to sewing, repair, pottery and jewellery making. And brands from Loewe to Kettle Chips have celebrated craft (with different degrees of credibility) through awards and marketing campaigns.

What changed? I would posit that the craft revival started in 2008, with the combination of the banking crisis and the publication of a hugely influential book, The Craftsman by Richard Sennett. Historically, craft does well in recession, when people pay more attention to the value of things and are more willing to entertain the idea of repairing possessions rather than simply binning them.

So the field of craft has garnered some (long-overdue) kudos. But what’s next? And who are the people taking it forward?

According to Annie Warburton, CEO of Cockpit Arts, London’s leading studios for contemporary crafts, ‘Craft is advancing on several different fronts.’ And one of those fronts is the collectibles market. Last year, for instance, studio ceramics auction house Maak sold a piece by Magdalene Odundo for £240,000, a record for a living ceramic artist.

In June, Design Centre Chelsea Harbour launched Artefact, a new fair devoted to high-end craft, while craft galleries such as Adrian Sassoon and Sarah Myerscough have become staples at international art and design shows like Masterpiece and PAD. As Warburton points out, compared to the fine art world, there are potential bargains to be had: ‘People are realising that, at the moment, the field is seriously undervalued in terms of price. Canny collectors are getting in on collectable craft.’

Makers themselves are also expanding craft’s horizons through a combination of technology and material experimentation.

Gareth Neal is a designer and maker, whose work in wood has ranged from investigating the traditional Orkney chair to working with cutting-edge CNC (computer numerical control) processes to create ‘Ves-el’ vases, in collaboration with the late Zaha Hadid. Most recently, he has been experimenting with 3D-printing sand (in a process called binder jetting) to create a huge, ribbed vessel that’s a little under two-metres tall.

‘I see technology as another tool,’ he says. ‘It’s just that nowadays tools are no longer something you carry about in a box on the back of a cart. They’ve outgrown the traditional workshop.’ Interestingly, Neal shies away from describing himself as a craftsman preferring the term, ‘craft explorer’. ‘I’m someone who is trying to find new territory and uncover different areas to play in,’ he says.

While Neal is using technology to challenge established notions of craft, James Shaw is fascinated by how we place value on materials. He has eschewed current fashion and has become an advocate for plastic.

‘I was quite interested in the hierarchy of materials, where plastic comes way down at the bottom,’ he explains. ‘I thought maybe there was some connection between that and the silly things we do with it, like using it for a few seconds and throwing it away. I figured if I applied the skills, understanding and time that easter craft decorations, it might unpack some other aspects of the material.’

For his ‘Plastic Baroque’ series, Shaw takes high-density polyethylene pellets (recycled from packaging), which are heated, extruded through a kind of homemade gun, and then rapidly manipulated before the gooey substance cools down, to create objects that are subsequently sold on the collectibles market.

He is by no means alone in working with materials more often thought of as waste. Emma Witter is a maker and artist who uses animal bone to create wonderfully delicate sculptures. She began working with the material for practical reasons.

‘It was about having no money and working with what was around me,’ she explains. ‘If I wanted to use metal, for example, I’d have to go to a foundry, which is expensive. So I was collecting things that were to hand and free.’ She picked up her first bones from her own meals and at dinner parties. ‘On the odd occasion we went to restaurants, I’d put them aside,’ she tells me, with a hint of a giggle.

Importantly, too, there has been a collective realisation in the craft world that it needs to expand its base and appeal to a more diverse cross-section of the population.

Over the past 18 months, for example, it has been fascinating to watch the rise of Chris Day, a mixed-heritage glass artist, who graduated from Wolverhampton University in 2019. Since then, his extraordinary work, which focuses on the Black experience in the UK and US, juxtaposing glass and copper piping and wire, has been shown at London’s SoShiro and Vessel Gallery. He currently has a genuinely moving installation at All Saints Church at Harewood House, just outside Leeds.

The beauty of craft is that it is light on its feet. Makers are playing with new techniques and materials that could inform all our futures. And it has something to say on a range of topics, too, from sustainability to discrimination.

In short, craft is not to be underestimated.