Surely you’re in the midst of Christmas preparations if you celebrate this holiday. Maybe you’ve also been wondering how to make your decorations as sustainable as possible this year. Sure, the most sustainable thing to do is to keep using your old decorations, but sometimes it just has to be something new. Or you’re looking for a small, individual gift idea for a loved one with whom you don’t actually gift yourself anything. The craft tip from the Lifestylehotel SAND is also ideal for this!

Sustainable Christmas decoration crafts: Individual Christmas baubles for your Christmas tree

This year at SAND, transparent acrylic balls with the SAND logo decorate the tree. The team has been busy crafting for this, and the results fit in perfectly with the hotel’s Scandinavian-inspired design.

But wait: acrylic baubles? Plastic? That’s not very sustainable, you might think. That’s what I thought too at first, but Marion provides some good arguments why these baubles can be quite sustainable:

• The balls are break-proof. If one falls from a tree, it will survive the fall even if the ground is hard.
• They are inexpensive and practical as an initial base for your own Christmas tree decorations, which you can of course supplement with other sustainable materials.
• They’re light on the branch.
• And they’re weatherproof outdoors. In stormy times, you just gather them up and hang them again.

You can also fill them individually each year for a new twist on the theme. Especially for creative people like me, this is an unbeatable argument, especially since finding ideas and crafting is a great thing to do during Advent.

Crafting instructions for your individual tree ornaments

You need:

• A fillable plastic ball, preferably with a hanger.
• Material for filling (in the case of SAND, the logo as an image file)
• a printer, if necessary
• Scissors and other craft materials
• A ribbon for hanging

Make sustainable Christmas decorations: Here’s how!

1. If you want to have a motif in the ball like the SAND, i.e. a photo, a graphic or similar, then print it out first. If you have a photo, you can use one half of your sphere to determine where to cut. If you have a logo or graphic, you can draw a circle of the diameter of your sphere on the computer to help you. Think about the back side, too!
2. Clamp your picture into the sphere and close it. Of course, you can also use other materials such as sand and shells, pine greenery or recycled old tree ornaments.
3. Close the ball.
4. Thread your ribbon (e.g. a jute or raffia string) through the suspension and knot it.

Sustainable Filling Tips:

• Use your old tree ornaments and give them a new life.
• Collect natural materials on your next walk and get creative with them, e.g. pine cones, apples, rose hips, …
• Get together with friends to do crafts and exchange your materials.
• Print graphics and the like on recycled paper.