Get the Kids Involved: DIY Gifts for Little Hands – Part One 1 December 2014  |  Nicola

If you’ve got kids in the family, Christmas is a great opportunity to get them involved in some exciting craft projects; a dollop of glue, a sprinkle of glitter and a blob of clay, and you’ve got all the ingredients you need for a special handmade gift.

DIY Snow Globes

With an old jam jar, a bit of glitter and a miniature tree, you can make yourself some pretty jazzy snowglobes, but glass jars don’t exactly mix well with little ones. We love this tutorial over at My So Called Crafty Life, which cleverly uses plastic wine glasses to make bell-jar snowglobe ornaments – perfect!

Chunky Beaded Jewellery

Even the youngest children can thread simple chunky wooden beads onto a length of jewellery leather, but older children might like to get a bit more involved by painting the beads and then adding in some more quirky findings; we love the DIY necklace tutorial at Yesterday’s Sweetheart, which also includes some washers for variety, and the dip-painted necklace from Craft and Creativity which is beautifully simple. We were also quite keen on the wooden bracelet made with lengths of coloured stretch cord over at Playful Learning; the pop of neon against the wood is just perfect.

Salt Dough and Clay

Rather than using clay or salt dough to make beads or badges, we quite liked the idea of making some magnets for somebody’s fridge; either use letter cutters to make alphabet magnets, or simple shapes to create colourful geometrics. We adore the charming cloud and raindrops magnets at Casa e Trend, and thought that the heart salt-dough magnets at Red Ted Art would make the perfect Christmas gift for a loved one.