Easy, Natural, DIY Christmas Ornaments for your Tree

This article shares information on how to create easy, natural, DIY Christmas ornaments for your tree this holiday season.

If you are new to this blog: Welcome! My name is Anna and I share information on collecting antique/vintage items, refurbishing furniture, and making small crafts/projects. The purpose of this blog is to share how to use creativity and antiques to make your home beautiful. In addition to the blog, you can follow me on the following social media accounts; Instagram, Facebook or Pinterest.

Back Story

Every year, Christmas inspires me to decorate using items that are easy, natural and handmade.  Rather than running out to the nearest big box store to buy more Christmas decorations, using items readily available is a great way to embrace the holiday spirit.  In this article, I am sharing how you can use natural materials, from your garden, to decorate your Christmas Tree. Further, I am offering a few tips and ideas on how to DIY your own ornaments using some basic supplies such as paper or wood and adorning them with acrylic paint and glitter. 

Creating your own decorations is so much fun and is environmentally friendly. It’s also a way to customize  your Christmas tree to reflect your personal design and style.  

Dogs and Fragile Ornaments

We have two active dogs in our home. They are constantly chasing one another around the coffee table and wrestling.  As such, we are reluctant to use fragile, breakable or extremely valuable ornaments on our Christmas tree.  More than once, the dogs rough-housing around the Christmas tree has resulted in damaged or broken ornaments.  Further, our small terrier mix is absolutely obsessed with light reflections.  She chases them around the room and barks at the refracted light for hours on end.  

​This limits the type of ornaments we can use on our Christmas Tree. 

For all of the reasons above, we chose to decorate our tree using nature inspired ornaments and DIY homemade Christmas decorations.  (Translation – these ornaments are not breakable.) These are simple ideas that are cost effective.  

Read on if you want to learn more about creating easy, natural, DIY ornaments for your tree.  If you also have a dog who obsessed with reflecting lights, then these ideas may also be useful for you.

Easy, Natural and DIY Christmas Tree Ornaments

Our Christmas Tree

In general, you only need a few different types of Christmas decorations for your tree.  We have a 7.5 foot flocked Christmas tree from the King of Christmas and we love it.  The flocked branches create a beautiful back drop for ornaments.   The tree is easy to assemble and comes pre-lit.  The lights on the tree are easy to adjust using a remote control, which comes in the Christmas Tree box.

A few years ago, we decided to invest in a good quality artificial Christmas tree that we can use season after season. This tree is definitely a great investment.

You can purchase the tree here.

This year, we decorated our tree with the following natural elements and DIY items:

• Dried hydrangeas and foliage – most came from our backyard
• Antique looking paper stars – these were DIY’d homemade Christmas ornaments
• Vintage satin ribbon – which was turned into a garland
• Wooden ornaments resembling architectural elements

For some added sparkle, I also added some shatter proof tinsel balls.  I purchased these from Target several years ago and couldn’t be happier with them.  As an added bonus, although they add sparkle, they do NOT reflect light.  A small blessing when you have a terrier to who is obsessed with reflected light. 

I will discuss each of these elements below and present you with other options or ideas.  

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​Natural Ornaments

Dried Foliage offers so much potential for easily decorating a Christmas Tree.  This tree was adorned with dried hydrangeas and dried gypso.  The hydrangeas are from our backyard.  I harvested them in early fall and let them dry upside down in our basement.  Natural Christmas ornaments are the best!  They are easy to obtain and cost nothing!

Starting at the base of the tree and working in a spiral pattern to the top of the tree, simply insert bunches of dried foliage.  

Here are some additional types of dried foliage you can use on your tree:

• Dried flax 
• Pepper Berry Bunches
• Dried Heather
• Dried Magnolia leaves
• Dried Nigella – which have seed pods
• Pampass Grass

Terrain has a great selection of natural dried florals.  

Of course, you can also use a variety of dried or dehydrated fruits to decorate your Christmas tree.  Some ideas include:

• Dehydrated oranges.  Either whole oranges or orange slices
• Dried pear slices
• Dried apple slices
• Other dehydrated citrus fruit – such a grapefruit or lemons.

It’s fairly easy to make these dried fruits yourself.  Here is a tutorial on how to dry fruit slices.

It’s also worth noting you can make pinecone ornaments.  Lora Bloomquist has a tutorial on how to make these natural decorations.  You will need pine cones, a hot glue gun, glitter, paint, a tart tin and some ribbon. Pine cones are readily available in our backyard.  

These nature-inspired Christmas decorations add warmth to your tree and are a simple way to bring the outside in during the winter months. 

DIY Star Ornaments

If you have any old books, sheet music, maps or even newspaper print in your home, these paper stars are easy DIY Christmas ornaments to create for your Christmas tree.  I found these handmade ornaments to be particularly impactful when they are large. Each of the large stars shown on this tree were made using 2 pages of sheet music.   To make the stars sparkle, I added some glitter to the ends of each point.  

Thankfully, the glitter only adds a little sparkle and doesn’t cause reflections on the walls. 

It’s worth noting these stars can be made in variety of sizes.  In addition to the large stars, I made some medium and small stars to keep things visually interesting.  Initially, I made these stars for the 4th of July but I decided to make more for the Christmas tree. 

Here is a tutorial on how to make paper stars. 

Use Ribbon

Some time ago, I found a large spool of 3 inch wide ribbon at an antique store.  These types of ribbons are readily available at your local craft store or online.   To decorate this tree, I cut a piece of ribbon approximately 3-4 feet in length – and every 6 to 10 inches tied the ribbon to an interior branch on the tree.  You can use floral wire, pipe cleaners or even twine to secure the ribbon to the interior of the tree. Periodically, step back to ensure the ribbon is evenly distributed throughout the tree. 

Alternatively, you could tie a ribbon bow on to various branches of the tree.  This is really pretty if the bow has long tails. 

Here are some affordable ribbons you can use:

• Burlap Ribbon– this spool has 20 yards
• Gros Grain – this spool has 50 yards
• Satin Ribbon – this spool has 25 yards
• Velvet Ribbon – this spool has 10 yards

Using ribbon to decorate your Christmas tree is easy to do and affordable.

Wooden Ornaments

Finally, I stopped by a discount store to see what they offered that could be turned into an ornament.  Since I wanted to stick to natural Christmas tree decorations, I steered clear of anything made of plastic.  I was looking for natural items made out of wood or paper.  After some searching, I found some items described as “wooden tassel wall decor”.  After studying them for a few minutes, I decided they would make some easy ornaments.  

Although these particular wooden ornaments did not need to be painted, there were some other options which could be spruced up with a little bit of acrylic paint or other craft supplies.  Some other options I saw included:

• Small wooden bird houses
• Wooden cutouts of fruit, acorns, and leaves
• Wooden beads, which could be strung together to create a garland
• Small wooden lanterns with led lights

The wooden cutout ornaments could be further embellished by adding glitter or by applying gold leaf. Wooden leaf ornaments can look especially beautiful.   Here is a fabulous post on making an old book leaf craft from wooden cutouts. 

More Christmas Inspiration

If you are interested in seeing some other ideas for Christmas Decor, including trees and wreaths, you are going to LOVE what my friends have done. Cindy from Reinvented Delaware and Lynn from Living Large in a Small House both have some fabulous.

Christmas in the She Shed

Cindy decorated her recently built She Shed for Christmas and she is sharing all her ideas with you!

Christmas in the Greenhouse

Lynn decorated a Christmas tree in her greenhouse using dried hydrangeas.

In Closing

Our tree only has 5 different types of ornaments; dried foliage, DIY paper stars, ribbon, wooden elements resembling architectural pieces and tinsel balls. It was simple decor that incorporated pieces of nature.  More importantly, nothing was breakable or too precious given that we have two rambunctious dogs.

I hope you found some inspiration for your own holiday decor.  Using homemade natural Christmas decorations brings more meaning to the season and results in creative ideas.  Have a great time decorating your Christmas tree using elements from Mother Nature. 

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