Christmas Paper Crafts: 10 Projects With Full Steps and Templates

Which Paper for Which Project

The projects below use four kinds of paper, and the choice matters more than the colour.

• Coloured construction paper or origami paper. Thin, folds cleanly, cuts easily with child scissors. Right for chains, snowflakes, folded stars and anything a child does alone.
• Card or cardstock. Thicker, holds a crease and stands up. Needed for anything that has to support its own weight: cone trees, the village houses, the pop-up card.
• Newspaper and old magazines. Free, already in the house, and good for wrapping and for the underside of anything that will be covered with colour later.
• Thin cardboard from packaging. Cereal boxes and similar. Penn State Extension's Better Kid Care programme asks the useful question about a household's leftover items directly: "What happens to the cereal boxes, used envelopes, paper towel rolls and baby food jars?" Here they become bases for stars and the walls of the village.

Two tools do most of the work: a glue stick for thin paper and white craft glue for card. Tape is faster than either but shows, so use it on the back only. A ruler and a pencil are the whole template kit.

Scissors, Craft Knives and Candles

Safety in paper craft is a practice, not a warning, and it comes down to three habits.

Scissors by age. Blunt-tipped child scissors for anyone under about eight, adult scissors after that when an adult is at the table. Whoever is cutting sits down, and the scissors go back on the table between cuts rather than being carried around. Better Kid Care's own craft instructions make the division of labour plain: "Adults, you may need to do the cutting, depending on the ages of the children."

Craft knife is adult only. A few projects below (the pop-up card, the village windows) look neater with a craft knife. That step is done by an adult, on a cutting mat, with the child watching or doing the next step. No exceptions for a confident ten-year-old.

Paper and flame do not share a table. Every project here is flammable. The U.S. Fire Administration's guidance for candles is to "keep candles at least 12 inches away from anything that burns," to "make sure they are in stable holders and place them where they cannot be knocked down easily," and to consider "battery-operated flameless candles." A paper star next to a real candle is the one arrangement to avoid, so if the table centrepiece includes light, make it a battery tea light.

For the youngest children there is a fourth habit. Better Kid Care's guidance on children's art recommends adults "provide safe and interesting materials for children to use on their own," and lists "patterns to follow or lines to cut on" among the activities it does not recommend for open-ended art at that age. For a three-year-old, that means handing over torn paper and a glue stick rather than a template, and letting the result look like theirs.

Chains, Garlands and a Wreath

1. Classic paper chain. Suggested age: 3 and up with help, 5 and up alone. Time: about 20 minutes for a two-metre chain. Difficulty: easy.

Cut coloured paper into strips about 2 cm wide and 15 cm long. A ruler and pencil line every 2 cm down a sheet gives you a whole batch at once. Curl the first strip into a ring, overlap the ends by about 1 cm and glue. Thread the next strip through the ring, glue it into its own ring, and continue. Alternate two colours, or use every colour you have; both look right. To fix it to a wall, run a small loop of tape over the first and last rings. This is the project that a three-year-old can do from the first minute: the adult cuts the strips, the child glues the rings, and the chain grows in front of them.

2. Cut-paper snowflakes for the window. Suggested age: 7 and up. Time: about 10 minutes each. Difficulty: easy to medium.

Start with a square of thin paper. Fold it in half diagonally into a triangle, then in half again into a smaller triangle. Now fold the triangle into thirds: bring the left corner across to the right so it covers about two thirds of the shape, then fold the right corner across over that. You will have a narrow wedge with a ragged edge at the top. Cut the ragged edge off straight, then cut shapes into the two long sides: triangles, half circles, narrow slots. Leave the folded point at the bottom uncut, since it is the centre of the flake. Unfold gently. Tape the flakes flat to the inside of a window with small rolled pieces of tape at the back; they show best against the glass with daylight behind them.

3. Door wreath from paper cones. Suggested age: 8 and up, younger children can roll cones. Time: about 45 minutes. Difficulty: medium.

Cut a ring from thin cardboard: draw a circle about 25 cm across with a plate, and inside it a circle about 15 cm across with a bowl. Cut both lines, keeping the ring. Now cut squares of green paper, 10 cm each side. Roll each square into a cone from one corner and glue the edge so it holds. Glue the cones to the ring with their points facing outward, the wide ends toward the centre, overlapping like petals, until the ring is covered. A second layer of cones in a lighter green, placed between the first layer's gaps, makes it fuller. Finish with a paper bow (the method is in the wrapping section) at the bottom. Fix it to the door with a loop of ribbon or a strip of paper taped to the back of the ring.

Stars and Table Pieces

4. Folded standing star. Suggested age: 9 and up. Time: about 40 minutes for a pair. Difficulty: medium.

Start with a square of card, 15 cm each side. Fold it in half corner to corner both ways, and open it flat. Turn it over and fold it in half edge to edge both ways, and open it flat again. You now have eight creases meeting in the centre, four going one way and four the other. Push the centre up from the underside so the diagonal creases become ridges and the edge-to-edge creases become valleys; the square collapses into a four-pointed star with a raised centre. Pinch each point to sharpen it. Make a second star the same way, rotate it by 45 degrees, and glue the two together back to back so the points alternate, giving an eight-pointed star. To make it stand, glue the flat tip of one point to a small square of cardboard covered in paper. Two or three in different sizes along the middle of the table is a centrepiece with no candle in it.

5. Cone tree centrepiece. Suggested age: 6 and up. Time: about 30 minutes. Difficulty: easy.

Draw a half circle on card: put the pencil at the centre of one long edge of an A4 sheet and swing the ruler like a compass to mark a curve 20 cm from that point, then cut along it. Roll the half circle into a cone, overlap the straight edges and glue. Now cut green paper into strips 4 cm wide and cut a fringe along one long edge, snips about 3 cm deep every centimetre. Starting at the bottom of the cone, glue the uncut edge of a strip around the cone with the fringe hanging down. Work upward, each strip overlapping the one below, until you reach the tip. Curl the fringe outward over a pencil. A small paper star glued on top finishes it. A row of three in different heights, or one large one, works as a centrepiece.

Cards

6. Pop-up tree card. Suggested age: 7 and up, with the knife step done by an adult. Time: about 30 minutes. Difficulty: medium.

Fold a sheet of card in half to make the outer card. Take a second, slightly smaller sheet of green card and fold it in half. On the folded edge, mark five cuts of increasing length: with the fold at the left, draw five horizontal lines from the fold, at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 cm from the top, with lengths of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 cm. Cut along all five lines through both layers (child scissors are fine here, as the cuts start at the fold). Open the sheet and push each cut strip forward, creasing it the opposite way to the main fold, so the strips step out like the tiers of a tree when the card is opened at a right angle. Glue this inner sheet inside the outer card, applying glue everywhere except on the pushed-out strips. Cut a small yellow star and glue it above the top tier. If anyone wants to draw on the front, the ideas in our post on easy drawing ideas are the right size for a card.

7. Torn-paper tree card. Suggested age: 3 and up. Time: about 15 minutes. Difficulty: easy.

This is the card for the youngest maker, and it follows the open-ended approach from the safety section. Fold a piece of card in half. Give the child strips of green paper in two or three shades and let them tear the strips into pieces. The adult draws a faint triangle on the front of the card with pencil; the child glues the torn pieces inside it, overlapping, in any order. A strip of brown for the trunk and a torn yellow piece at the top finish it. The edges are ragged by design, and no two cards match, which is what makes a batch of them good to send.

Wrapping and a Simple Advent Calendar

8. Newspaper wrapping with a paper bow. Suggested age: 6 and up. Time: about 20 minutes per gift. Difficulty: easy.

Wrap the gift in a double layer of newspaper, folding the ends as you would with any paper and taping on the underside. Now the bow, which is made from strips of coloured paper 2 cm wide. Cut five strips: two of 25 cm, two of 20 cm and one of 8 cm. Twist each long strip into a figure eight by bringing both ends to the centre with a half twist, and glue at the centre. Stack the two large eights crossed, then the two smaller ones on top rotated, and finish with the short strip curled into a ring in the middle. Glue the bow to the parcel. A band of coloured paper around the middle of the newspaper, under the bow, ties the look together.

9. Advent calendar on a strip. Suggested age: 8 and up to make, any age to open. Time: about 90 minutes. Difficulty: medium.

The container is twenty-four small pockets on a wall strip. Cut a strip of card 120 cm long and 12 cm high (join two lengths if needed, with the join glued and taped behind). Now cut twenty-four rectangles of coloured paper, 8 cm by 10 cm each. Fold each rectangle up 6 cm from the bottom so it makes a pocket with a 4 cm flap above; glue the pocket's two sides closed with a thin line of glue, leaving the top open. Glue the pockets in a row along the strip, twelve per 60 cm, alternating colours. Number them 1 to 24 with a marker, out of order if you like the hunt. Each pocket holds a folded note, a small drawing or one piece of wrapped something. Fix the strip to the wall with tape loops behind at both ends and the middle. Keep the pockets simple: the point of a paper calendar is that it can be rebuilt next year in an afternoon.

A Paper Village

10. Card houses for a shelf or mantel. Suggested age: 9 and up, with an adult on the window cuts. Time: about 60 minutes for three houses. Difficulty: medium to hard.

Here is the net for one house, described so you can draw it on card with a ruler. Draw a row of four rectangles side by side, each 6 cm wide and 8 cm tall, sharing their vertical edges; these are the four walls. On the top edge of the first and third rectangles, draw a triangle pointing up with its base on that edge and its tip 4 cm above it; these are the gables. Along the outer vertical edge of the fourth rectangle, add a 1 cm strip as a glue tab. Cut the whole outline out as one piece, and score (press a line with a ballpoint pen along the ruler, without cutting) every internal line so it folds cleanly. Fold the walls into a square tube and glue the tab inside the first wall.

For the roof, cut a rectangle 8 cm by 14 cm, fold it in half along the short direction so it makes a tent 8 cm by 7 cm each side, and glue it onto the two gables. Windows and a door are drawn on with a marker, or cut out by an adult with a craft knife before folding if you want to put a battery tea light inside; the light glows through the openings. Real candles do not go inside paper houses, for the reason given in the safety section.

Three houses at different scales make a street. A strip of white paper along the shelf under them is snow, torn paper trees in green stand between the houses. If you photograph the village, the symmetry of a row of gables is the kind of thing our post on symmetry in photography is about.