Watercolor Christmas Ornaments

I love to make holiday crafts with the kids. My criteria when choosing a good craft is that it needs to not only be fun, but easy to do. You won’t believe how easy it is to make these watercolor Christmas ornaments! We have recently begun experimenting with oil pastels in our crafts and have loved it! And what child doesn’t love to paint! This craft uses watercolors to achieve the desired effect. All you will need is:

heavy duty water color paper
paint brushes
permanent black marker
white oil pastel crayon (regular white crayon could work too)
watercolor paint
glitter markers

To start, you can free hand the outline of different ornaments (or find some great templates on google) using a black permanent marker on watercolor paper. This will help to prevent smearing. There is no need to be fancy about the shape. Circles will do just fine. You will also be cutting them out later so don’t worry about perfect shapes!

outline using permanent black marker

Once you are satisfied with the outline of your watercolor Christmas ornaments, you can now add the designs inside. This is where the oil pastel comes in. I would encourage you to let your child be creative here. Any design will do! Just be sure to press firmly enough so that you have good solid designs (that will hold up to painting).

Now for the fun part! Get out those watercolor paints and let your child have at it! There are no color rules here. They can do one solid color or mix them up! The oil pastel will repel the paint as you go, just be sure to use enough water so that the paint glides over rather than drags. And again, because they are going to be cut out, don’t worry about staying in the lines!

Once the paint has completely dried, simply cut them out and glue them onto any color of construction paper that you would like! Finish them up with a touch of sparkle from glitter markers to create the effect of hanging ornaments.