Holiday Crafts with Kids: Winter Dioramas
We have Randi from Swoon with us today to share another fun project that families can enjoy together during the holiday season. We can’t wait to make some dioramas of our own!
There’s something magical about miniature scenes, isn’t there? A tiny world created from the imagination. I recently revived a long lost love of miniatures and dioramas by making some festive winter scenes with my kids. There are so many ideas for making these little displays out there from simple trees in jars, to elaborate paper creations. I love the versatility of a diorama project and the amount of creativity involved. The best part is that you can make a little scene with whatever you have on hand, even if that means paper, markers and a few (little) willing hands! All you really need to start is a box. Any size will do. This is less of a “how to” post and more of an inspiration to get creative with what you have and make something!
For our winter scene we gathered: a small box, glitter, glue, oven bake clay, and some moss and sticks from our yard. We also ended up adding some fake snow and a little deer friend from our animal collection.
To start I cut and glued some black felt to the inside of our box. Paper would also work great, whatever you have on hand! I squeezed some dots of glue randomly over the back of our scene and then had the girls sprinkle glitter all over to make falling snow.We also lined our sticks with glue and sprinkled with more glitter “snow” to mimic the look of winter trees.
Next, we made some shapes with oven bake clay and baked them according to the instructions on the package. Once they were done baking and cooling, I added some black dots to our mushrooms with a toothpick and a bit of acrylic paint.
Then we starting setting up our scene by putting all of our elements together in the box. The only thing we actually glued down were our stick trees. The rest is moveable and can be arranged and played with as desired. We sprinkled fake snow (found at craft stores) and glitter over everything. Sugar or course salt would also work great as snow and probably look more realistic too!
If you’re looking for more inspiration, click on the links below to see other great examples of winter scenes and dioramas from around the web:
1. Easy winter scenes created in mason jars
2. A glittery Christmas tree diorama
