So, this is the first year we've done a proper christmas tree (I know, I've been such a slacker up till now). But living in small apartments and then overseas meant that I... well, I just didn't bother with the whole thing. But now we have the space, and a toddler who is SUPER excited for Christmas I knew it was time to bite the bullet and get on the festive wagon!
And number one on our list was to make dinosaur christmas tree decorations! We found quite a few blogs online that had done similar things which gave us a great starting point and then we tweaked a few things along the way to make it suit us :)
The materials we used: cheap plastic dinosaurs, small screw hooks, white paint, gold spray paint and gold string.
First thing we did was find some cheap plastic dinosaurs at the local $2 shop. Then we did 2 coats of white paint as a base.
Next step was to spray them gold. Having the white under as a base worked so well with gold, giving a bit of contrast and helping the shimmer to POP a bit more. (I also sprayed a heap of other things gold - yes I got a bit excited with the spraypaint lol - you can just see in frame some nuts and twigs I used to decorate presents).
So most of the blogs I read suggested using a drill to drill a hole in the dinosaur for the screw. And in our (not so handy) household using a drill seemed like a bit of a task. If this isn't you, go ahead and drill away! Instead hubby just used the screw to poke a little hole in the dinosaur and screw it in. A lot easier for us than using a drill (when we would have no idea what we are doing!)
Then all we did was add a gold string and voila - dinosaur decorations!
All up it did take a bit of time to do all of the different stages to create the dinosaur christmas decorations BUT it was a lot of fun and Austin really enjoyed the process. We did quite a few other DIY decorations too (because who wants to spend a fortune when you have little hands ready to tug and pull at the tree?). I wouldn't say they are quite as fabulous as the dinosaurs but they fill the tree for now, and then my plan is to slowly add some more sentimental and special decorations each year (remember, I'm just a Christmas tree novice, ok? Gimme a bit of time).
We purchased this wooden garland from BIG W then cut it apart to make indiviual decoartions with each of the pieces.
Here you can see a gold star (yep, more gold spray paint!). This is one of the pieces from the BIG W garland. Comes up alright, doesn't it? And we also got some rolls of ribbon and went nuts with tying bows all over the tree. Easy peasy!
And here is one of the pretty gold bows.
Pretty happy with our first proper christmas tree! And even the more special because we all helped to create most of the decorations :)
