Christmas Dotty Garland

 


We warn you - once you get going on this Christmas dotty garland, you may find it hard to stop! The garland is quick and simple to make, looks very festive and pretty whether hung in the window like ours, strung up vertically or draped on the Christmas tree. You can vary the garland to suit any colour scheme and use solid colours, translucent papers, shiny, glittery, matt, patterned, plain, recycled .... in fact, any combination looks great!

Red and white Christmas dotty garland hung in window
Here is our red and white Christmas dotty garland draped in the window

Christmas dotty 3D garland
We've also got a 3D garland which you might enjoy making too...
Christmas dotty 3D garland

You will need:

Circle paper punch or scissors to cut your own circles
Assorted scraps of paper
Long lengths of thin ribbon
Glue stick

Instructions:

Cut out a big stack of circles from your scraps of paper. You can make a plan for your garland (we decided to use red and white only) or you can just throw everything in together!

Christmas dotty garland 1

For this particular garland we used red construction paper, decorative Indian craft paper, red and white origami paper and white textured printer paper. We punched the circles using a Martha Stewart circle punch.

Leaving a good length at the end of the ribbon so you can tie the garland up later, lay 3 or 4 circles face down on the table and then place your ribbon over the top. Choose a second circle and dab it with the glue stick - you don't have to be too precise!

Christmas dotty garland 2

Now press the gluey circle down over another circle, sandwiching the ribbon between. That's all there is to it!

Keep going until you run out of ribbon, or your garland is long enough...

For younger children:

  1. Cut out your circles in advance and leave them to do the sticking
  2. Choose big bold colours - obviously red, white, green and maybe purple are great for Christmas
  3. Make the circles bigger, and use wider ribbon
  4. Layer up a number of sheets of paper and cut through to make lots of circles at a time
  5. What about using some of your children's artwork? Or providing a certain number of plain circles for drawing on first!

Recycling ideas:

  • This looks really pretty with a mixture of circles cut from old, slightly yellowed books or music manuscripts and Christmas paper
  • Cut circles from magazines, choosing appropriate colours
  • Use left over pieces of Christmas gift wrap and Christmas cards
  • The insides of envelopes are often very pretty
  • Sweet wrappers, baking paper and the silver paper you find inside smart chocolate bars could all look good, too...

 

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