.jpeg "Kourtni Munoz")
A Note From The Home Depot
Make a fun family holiday craft with the help of The Home Depot. Follow along as Kourtni of House on Longwood Lane teaches us how to make a DIY clothespin ornament!
As a family we place a special emphasis on our advent calendar during the holidays. We try to fill our days in December with local free activities, family friendly crafts, baking and movie nights.
Each card in our advent calendar has an activity or theme to it. Today, we are making a snowflake clothespin Christmas ornament and headed to our favorite big orange store to get our craft supplies.
Step 1: Prep Your Supplies
Lay out your drop cloth on a designated flat surface. You’ll need eight clothespins to create one snowflake. Take those eight clothespins and pull them apart gently and set aside the silver spring (you will not need that for the snowflake).
Step 2: Paint Your Clothespins
Paint samples make the perfect size craft paint for this project and the sponge paint brushes cover the whole surface of the wooden clothespins.
Let yours and your kids' creativity fly with the paint colors! We let our kids pick out their favorite paint chips at the Home Depot paint counter. We all chose two each and came home with eight sample paint colors. After everyone has painted their clothespins, let them dry.
Step 3: Assemble Your Clothespins Together to Make a Snowflake
Once your clothespins are dry to the touch, you can assemble them into snowflakes. This is a two-part gluing process. Laying out a piece of parchment paper will make it so the snowflakes aren’t glued to the drop cloth.
You’ll flip the clothespins so the flat back part is glued together first. Hold each one together for about 30 seconds then set aside and repeat.
Once all of your clothespins are glued back-to-back you should have eight solid pieces again as shown below:
Take four glued clothespins and glue the edges together where the ridges meet.
Next, take the remaining four and add glue. Gently slide them in at the four points where the four clothespins you already glued together meet.
The glue suggests letting it cure for 24 hours before handling. We were able to move them after about four hours.
Note: Have a gentle hand when gluing the remaining four clothespins as pushing too hard will separate the snowflake.
Step 4: Drill Hole to Hang
Use a power drill and pilot hole drill bit to drill a small hole on one end of the snowflake.
Step 5: Add Hanging Hardware
Thread a piece of string about seven inches long through the hole and tie the end strings together in a knot.
Step 6: Hang and Enjoy!
My kids’ favorite part about decorating the tree is getting to hang the ornaments they’ve made over the years, and adding these DIY Clothespin Christmas Ornaments to the tree did not disappoint!
If your kids are older, you can also stain the wooden clothespins for a different look! Just be sure to wear gloves and work in a well-ventilated area.
