DIY Natural Christmas Tree Ornaments

Looking for a way to decrease the crazy this Christmas? Nature-centered surroundings tend to help me do that. There’s a very simple way to bring nature into your home and Christmas décor this season, helping you re-focus and ground yourself in the beautiful and natural…with a touch of festive cheer. In this article, I’ll show you how to create # simple Christmas tree ornaments using (mostly) natural materials: glitter gold pinecones, dried citrus ornaments, and cinnamon stick bundles. Enjoy!

Glitter Gold Pinecones

Spread the pinecones out onto a drop cloth in a well-ventilated area.

Shake up a can of gold spray paint. In this case, the glossier gold, the better.

Open up a container of gold glitter flakes, and have it within arm’s reach and at the ready.

Spray about 2 square feet of pinecones with the gold spray paint. Quickly sprinkle glitter over the wet paint.

Repeat, working in small (approx. 2 sqft) sections until you’ve completed all the pinecones. Let them dry for 30 minutes, then flip them over. Repeat.

Tie fishing line around the pinecones and hang on the Christmas tree. Or use them as part of a natural vignette. The gold and glitter is subtle but really adds to the sparkle of the season.

Dried Citrus Ornaments

Wash your fruit, and dry the rind. You can use limes, lemons, oranges, any citrus fruit, really.

Slice the fruit fairly thin.

Recommend about 1/4″ thicknesses so they all dry uniformly.

Use a small, pointy object (e.g., a fork tine) to create a hole near the rind. This will be useful after the fruit has dried, so you don’t have to poke a hole to hang the fruit at that point.

Try not to get the hole too big; it will actually be larger after the fruit has dried, so keep it small.

Place your sliced fruit on a food dehydrator tray.

Fill up the tray, leaving plenty of space between the fruits so air can circulate. This will help all the ornaments to dry uniformly.

With lemons, be sure to take any seeds out after slicing the fruit and before placing them onto the dehydrator tray.

Spread these fruits out as well. Stack the trays.

Run the dehydrator on 135F until the fruits are dried out, about 4 hours.

Check the fruits after that to make sure they are completely dried.

Loop fishing line or a paper clip through the hole in the fruit. Hang the fruit.

Any type of citrus fruit works well for this and looks lovely against the evergreen of a Christmas tree – lemons, limes, oranges, tangerines, etc.

Cinnamon Stick Bundle Ornaments

You can use any size of cinnamon sticks for this natural ornament. This example uses 6” sticks, although you can have fun with 8”, 10”, and even 12” sticks as well. Bundles of three work well.

Wrap fishing line twice around the bundle of three cinnamon sticks; tie in a square knot with about 4” of length leftover. That extra length of fishing line will become the loop to hang the ornament.

Wrap jute twine around the center of the cinnamon stick bundle, over the wrapped fishing line to hide it.

You can make this twine wrapping as wide or narrow as you want.

Grab some anise seeds. These are beautiful star-shaped pods, aren’t they amazing?

Decide where you want the anise star, and place a generous drop of hot glue in that spot.

Press the anise star onto the glue and hold it for a few minutes until the glue cools.

You can stick with a single anise star, or you can add multiple.

Here is a cinnamon stick bundle ornament with small jute twine and three anise seed pods.

Play around with the ratios of twine to anise stars – more twine, applied more densely in the center of the cinnamon stick bundle, provides a sweet foundation to a single anise pod.

Less twine and more anise stars is a combination that looks rustic and homey.

However you choose to incorporate these two natural pieces, you really can’t go wrong. The end result is going to be a lovely, natural Christmas tree ornament that smells as good as it looks.

You can also use dried citrus fruit on your cinnamon stick ornaments. Thread the fishing line through the hole you formed in the fruit before drying it.

The fishing line will hold the fruit to the cinnamon sticks, but a drop or two of hot glue will hold the fruit in place.

An anise star glued on top of the fruit completes the look nicely. The fruit gives a nice pop of color and dimension to the natural cinnamon sticks.

If you want to step outside the realm of total natural ornamentation, consider adding some bakers’ twine to the bundle. Red and white striped feels pepperminty and festive. Secure your three cinnamon sticks together in a bundle with fishing line.

Wrap the bakers’ twine around the bundle in one direction.

Wrap the twine back the other way, over top of the first round of bakers’ twine and leaning the opposite way.

Tie it off on the top or back; it doesn’t really matter which.

The end result is a sweet blend of traditional and modern natural Christmas tree ornamentation.

A modification using bakers’ twine involves wrapping the twine just on one half of the cinnamon stick bundle.

Attach a dried lemon slice via your fishing line.

And hot glue an anise pod to help the transition between bakers’ twine and dried lemon. I love this combination – fresh and simple and very natural all around.

You could wrap a denser version of bakers’ twine in the center of your cinnamon stick bundle and add a single anise star with hot glue.

This is such a simple way to add dimension and unique decoration to your Christmas tree. Personally, I love the distinct look of the 6” cinnamon sticks. They’re not as common in cooking as shorter cinnamon sticks and, therefore, add a special touch to the Christmas tree.

It’s amazing just how festive all-natural objects can be, both on their own and combined. Wouldn’t these look so lovely with the other DIY natural Christmas tree ornaments in this article?