I made these with my four-year old son and they turned out great. 10 years later, I still have some of them in my keepsake ornament box. I used a combination of vintage buttons and new buttons, and some of the more unique style of the vintage buttons makes this project a bit more fun and sophisticated for adults to craft along with the kids. Some of the buttons have fallen off over the years, but it’s an easy fix with some more glue.
Button Snowflakes and Trees
These were super easy to make, and my son LOVED making them. We crafted for two hours on these, and he would have worked on them longer if we didn’t have to stop.
I hot-glued popsicle sticks together in the various shapes, and once the glue had cooled my son applied tacky glue to the sticks and put on the buttons. After the tacky glue had begun to dry, I carefully hot glued the ribbons to the backs.
As you can see, there are various ways to make the trees and snowflakes depending on the size of sticks you use. For this craft, I used medium and small sized sticks. The buttons we used were a combination of ones I already had and ones I had bought just for this project, particularly the green ones. I hadn’t realized how expensive buttons can be at the store, so I would recommend looking at thrift stores or yard sales for some old buttons to use. Getting second-hand buttons is not only cheaper, but you get a nice variety of shapes and colors, which adds interest to your projects!
Beaded Candy Canes
These were simple to do and will look cute on a tree. We went for a mixture of traditional red and white and more contemporary mixed colors. We used pipe cleaners to string the beads, and bent the pipe cleaner at the ends. Using pipe cleaner is cheap and easy, but it is pretty obvious on the ends that it is pipe cleaner. Heavy wire would be easier to hide on the ends and would provide a cleaner look, if you would rather go that route.
We had a variety of beads for our project. Beads are not as cheap as I thought, so if you can get some from a thrift store or yard sale, go for it! For two of the candy canes I decided to use the beaded letters to make words that relate to Christmas. I didn’t want to go overboard with a whole bunch, so I just stuck to two; “Noel” and “Christ.” I experimented with a colorful red, green, and white pipe cleaner and spaced some beads on it to show off the color underneath. These would have looked great plain as well!
Popsicle Stick Snowmen
These snowmen are super cute and fairly easy to make. I bought on piece each of red and black felt and large popsicle sticks. I already had the buttons. For the carrot nose, I colored some white card stock orange and cut them out. Construction paper would have been ideal, but I didn’t want to buy a whole pack just for a little row of carrot noses.
My son and I painted the sticks white with some craft paint. He was super excited to use my paint!
While those dried, I cut out the hats, scarves, and noses. Once the sticks were dry I hot glued the scarves and hats onto the sticks. After the glue cooled, my helper was free to get to work on the rest of the snowman. We used tacky glue on the nose and the buttons, and permanent marker for the eyes and mouth.
These snowmen are pretty versatile- you could leave them as-is, put magnets on the backs for on the refrigerator, or hot glue ribbon on the backs to hang them.
