DIY Christmas Decorations
How To: Make a Spinning Optical Illusion Decoration for Christmas
The holiday season wouldn't be the same without decorations. Ornaments and fancy lighting brightens up a neighborhood and helps spread the holiday cheer. While decorations and Christmas lights are fantastic, why not get a little more creative and some fun in the process?
How To: 8 Crafty Ways to Reuse Old Christmas Ornaments & Decorations
Broken glass Christmas ornaments? Evergreen wreath falling apart? Before you throw away or donate Christmas decorations you no longer need, see if you can reuse or recycle them for better use year-round or for next year's holiday season.
How To: Make a Cheap Snowflake Christmas Tree Topper Out of Toilet Paper Tubes
Every Christmas tree needs a topper, but most of them are boring and generic. If you want something a little more unique, making it yourself is a great way to go, and a DIY Weeping Angel topper is a good twist on a classic, but not everyone is a Dr. Who fan.
How To: Fix Broken Christmas Lights Faster with a Lighter
The most annoying thing about Christmas lights is when one bulb blows, the whole string stops working. There's no easy way to tell which one is out when it's a huge strand, so it can take forever to fix.
How To: Don't Like Traditional Christmas Trees? Try Out One of These 7 Festive DIY Alternatives
The concept and structure of Christmas hasn't changed much since its inception. In its infancy, Christians recruited Roman pagans by associating Christmas with the Saturnalia, an ancient Roman festival in honor of the deity Saturn (also held in December). The pagans had long worshiped trees (as did other historical cultures) and would bring them into their homes and decorate them, something that influenced our modern holiday decorations. While certain things such as gifts and ornaments have b...
How To: Geek Up Your Holidays with These 10 Nerdy DIY Christmas Tree Ornaments
One of the more enjoyable parts of Christmas (other than opening gifts of course) is going out to find the perfect tree, struggle bringing it into the house, and decorating it. As the years went by, I realized that our tree looked exactly like every other tree in the neighborhood: the same lights, the same angel at the top, and the same red, green and white ornaments.
Silver & Gold: DIY Modular Origami Christmas Ornaments
After becoming addicted to basic sonobe modular origami, I decided to make ornaments for relatives as Christmas gifts. I tried using fancy paper from stores like Paper Source, and cutting it to proper origami size, but I could never get the tight folds I wanted with non-traditional, non-origami paper. I ended up using this metallic origami paper that folds beautifully, and I'm pretty happy with the tiny models I ended up with. Forgive these pictures (iPhone/Instagram), I don't have my regular...
How To: 10 Last-Minute DIY Christmas Decorations for the Cheap & Lazy
Some people put up their holiday decorations as soon as Thanksgiving is over. Some wait until Christmas Eve. Right now, the only thing in my whole apartment that would tip you off is a tiny little fake tree on the counter. I've been planning on decorating all month, but I haven't quite gotten around to it yet.
How To: 60+ Free Paper Snowflake Templates—Star Wars Style!
Everyone knows how to make paper snowflakes, but the kind you learned to cut in kindergarten can get a little boring. However, they are free DIY holiday decorations, and they don't have to be a generic snowflake design. They can be anything you want, from nerdy math kirigami to all the Star Wars characters you can think of!
How To: 5 Weird & Easy Ways to Water Your Christmas Tree
Christmas trees, once decorated and brightly lit, are the penultimate holiday decoration, but authentic pines lose their brilliance fast without any nourishment. Plus, they are major fire hazards without regular hydration. But watering one requires a lot of sliding around on the floor, and it can be hard to tell how much water is in the bowl beneath the dark, prickly branches. These five hacks can help!
How To: Fill in Ugly Bare Spots on Your Christmas Tree
You've found the perfect tree — or so you think. As hard as we try to display an ideal tree each year, both plastic and pine can disappoint, especially when you're shopping on the cheap.
How To: Build Star Wars Christmas Tree Ornaments Out of LEGOs
LEGOs are more than just a toy for young children— it's an emerging art form combining photography, stop-motion (i.e., brickfilms), and imitative models that portray today's pop culture as it is. It's something visual culture analysts are sure to be studying over the next decade, and Chris McVeigh, from Halifax, Nova Scotia, is sure to be studied for his LEGO mastery.
How To: Hang a Christmas Wreath Without Damaging Your Door
Whether you choose to hang an authentic or artificial pine Christmas wreath on your door — or an entirely different type, like ones made of paper waste or even food — chances are you've spent a year or two struggling with how to keep your decor hanging. With one easy to apply, quick to remove trick, you can skip the shiny wreath holder and any further damage to your front door.
How To: Spruce Up a Boring Christmas Tree with This Cheap, One-Ingredient Flocking (AKA Fake Snow)
Winter weather always looks so pretty on postcards. A blanket of fluffy white snow, icicles hanging from the trees, little woodland creatures scampering about...it's like a picture straight out of a storybook. But in the real world, after a day or two it usually looks more like this: If you want the beauty of freshly fallen snow without dealing with any grey slush or shoveling, artificial snow (aka flocking) is the way to go—especially when it comes to decorating your tree. You can always buy...
How To: Geekify Your Christmas Tree with This Dr. Who 'Weeping Angel' Tree Topper
So you've chosen the ideal Christmas tree for your place and decorated it so that it's mathematically perfect, but something's missing. It's not quite complete without a topper, but all of the traditional ones are soooo boring. What's a geek to do? If you're a fan of the newer Doctor Who show, Cynthia has the perfect solution for you with her DIY Weeping Angel tree topper, which you can make out of an old Barbie doll, some modeling clay, a plastic bottle, and spray paint. The first step in th...
How To: 12 DIY Christmas Tree Ornaments You Can Make from Things Around Your Home
Decorating your Christmas tree does not have to be an expensive ordeal. You can easily make personalized, unique ornaments for your tree by using things lying around your home, like toilet paper tubes, paper towels, wine corks, old newspapers, CDs (remember those?), plastic water bottles, and even dry pasta.
How To: Carouse Your Way to Christmas with This DIY Beer Can Advent Calendar
The holiday season is here, and most people have already started counting down. Advent calendars are a very traditional way to keep track of how many days are left, but most of the ones you see are either boring, made for little kids, or just plain ugly.
How To: Don't Throw Out Your Broken Bulbs—Turn Them into Better Christmas Tree Ornaments!
One of the most annoying things about the holiday season is that it's almost impossible to make it through without at least one ornament falling off the tree and shattering. Even if you give the cat its own "special room" for the whole month, something is bound to happen. Rather than throwing out broken ornaments, Steve Hoefer figured out a way to turn them into new ones using plain, clear glass ornaments and Modge Podge craft glue. And personally, I'd say the results look way better than the...
How To: Get a $5 Christmas Tree (And How to Take Care of It)
Perhaps the most important decoration of the holiday season is the Christmas tree. It's where all of the magic happens. If you're not into real Christmas trees, there's always some festive alternatives, but for those of us who can't live without a natural Christmas tree, choosing the right one for the right price can be an impossible task.