Heirlooms to treasure, or just plain creative family fun — either way, there’s a special magic to Christmas decorations that you make yourself at home, and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Here’s a round-up of patterns and how-to tutorials for frugal holiday decorations that you can make yourself:

Cardboard, glue, tiny pine cones, and scraps of birchbark — topped off with a sprinkle of glitter, the only special craft item you’ll need to do this — create a rustic miniature Christmas village! Kristin Nicholas –”Getting Stitched on the Farm” — gives a clear step-by-step tutorial for making your own.

Snuggle the houses on a landscape of poly fibrefill or quilt batting snow, if you’ve got some on hand, or just drape a white cloth over crumbled balls of newspaper to make a winter landscape to showcase the minature village.

Squawkfox makes soft stuffies in the shape of tiny trees from leftover scraps of fabric. Quick and easy to sew, it’s a great project for anyone just learning to sew — and you can have amazing fun in embellishing the simple stuffed trees with buttons and bows and fabric paints, whatever you have on hand! Download her printable 2-piece pattern and make yourself a whole forest of stuffies!

Popcorn garlands were always a part of Christmas when I was a child, for example. Sometimes we’d have a bag of those big burgundy-red cranberries to string along with the popcorn — beauty! And sometimes the family dog would sneak a snack from the Christmas tree. I still smile at the memories…

Becca spreads the seasonal joy (and festive decorations) outdoors, with molded bird seed treats — pretty wreaths to feed the birds while they decorate the trees in your yard. (These would make a terrific frugal gift for a birdlover, too!)

Tiny pieces of felt, a little stuffing, and a couple of paperclips — that’s all it takes to make these cute ice skates mini-ornaments from a tutorial by Not Quite Vintage (inspired by her grandmother). Add sequins or seed beads for buttons, or whip a bit of colourful embroidery floss up the front edge to look like laces.

Another favourite do-it-yourself Christmas decoration around our place, growing up, was salt dough modelling clay we’d shape like Play-do into stars and trees and angels, bake in the oven until they dried, then add a touch of craft paint and a ribbon for hanging… My salt dough modelling clay recipe is here, if you want to give it a try for yourself.

Maybe paper crafts are more your style?

Design Sponge has the DIY on this clever paper ball ornament — make a whole lot of them from those tag-ends of gift wrapping paper that are too small to use for much else, and dangle from a swagged evergreen garland, or hang them in a window or on your tree.

Want more Christmas paper crafts? You can find instructions for making the best ever 3-d paper snowflake at Cut Out and Keep . (I tell you, forget those paper snowflakes you might have made in kindergarten — this is in a whole other class!)

And if you’re short on time and/or patience, but you still want the snowflake bling, you can always go for this pretty blue snowflake, from the collection of free printables at Canon.

At the price of printer ink, though, I’d be inclined to print out one copy of the pattern and use it as a template for making snowflakes from plain white paper. I’ve done something similar with lightweight cardstock (empty cereal boxes, actually), then used a little thinned-down white glue and glitter to make them into stars…

This year, the holidays are going to be especially tough for a lot of families — so what better time to rediscover the true meaning of the season, sitting down with the kids to create new traditions that have more to do with sharing the moment than with spending hard-earned money at the mall?

Kay Turple is a Canadian artist who makes amazing 3-dimensional dog portraits — all sorts of dog breeds, like this gorgeous fluffy Old English Sheepdog — working from your photographs to make a tiny true-to-life model in felted wool.

How does Kay make her miniature pets? She gives an overview of the needle felting technique at KaysK9s.com, but simply put –

Simply put, needle felting is the process of taking raw wool roving and using a barbed felting needle to sculpt it into shape. The sculpting is done by poking the wool thousands of times until the fibers interlock and felt together. This process is extremely time consuming, and each dog or cat normally takes 10 – 25 hours to create.

Indulge an urge, add something very special to a collection of dollhouse-scale miniatures, or commemorate a beloved companion animal. They run from 1″ to 4″ in size, or are made in standard 1:12 dollhouse scale. (She does cats and other creatures, too.)

These are true art pieces, not toys — and are priced accordingly, reflecting the many hours of skilled handcrafting that goes into each felted dog.

Best yet, a portion of all proceeds is donated to support the Ontario SPCA and local animal shelters. As well, Kay sponsors a shelter dogs — see a picture of Chico, the Chihuahua mix who is her current “foster pup,” at www.kaysk9s.blogspot.com. What more could a dog lover ask?

You’d think that the Museum of Modern Art’s online shop (MOMA) would be all tasteful leather desk accessories and reprints of Old Masters, right?

Not so!

Clockwise from top left:

• Curved glasses in a rainbow of colours. Maybe not the best thing for your restorative orange juice on New Year’s Day morning, but a cheery sight in the winter kitchen.
• The essential wall clock for peeking around corners at fridge-raiding roommates and mischievous children — the Spy Clock is a convex glass mirror with sleek metal hands that tell you how long you’ve been obsessing about what other people are doing in the house, instead of minding your own business.
• How could a Color Spectrum umbrella not perk up a dreary wet day?
• So, Broadway’s on strike, and you can’t afford a weekend in New York anyway, even if the shows are flowing? No worries — MUJI’s New York in a Bag has it covered, with all the important architecural icons made in miniature of sustainable wood.
• And finally — my personal favourite — a cuddly Pig Finger Puppet that can double as a fridge magnet if you feel the need to pretend that you don’t really play with soft toys… (Six bucks for a flying pig! Who could resist?)

I’ve got to confess to having a weakness for Spookytown miniatures — well, anything miniature, if it comes to that — ever since I read Piers Anthony’s now-classic fantasy On a Pale Horse (part of his Incarnations of Immortality series), and then spotted the “Death On A Pale Horse” figurine in that really good Toronto hobby shop, whasitsname… the store where it’s all about models and model-building and they do those demos…

Never mind, it’ll come to me later…

So, I’m thinking, can I really justify a scattering of Spookytown fantasy in my domestic decor, once we get past Halloween?

Well, no.

Not without looking like the total geek that old friends may secretly suspect lurks inside.

And certainly not if we’re talking about Spookytown’s miniature ghouls and zombies and mummies risen from the crypt…

But look, they’ve got these absolutely charming miniature trees — in autumn colours, too!

Like, no-care mini bonsai, really.

Imagine a few 4-inch trees in a long stoneware dish filled out with a bed of velvety moss… or a draped length of dark velvet, a tiny bright tree all nestled in the hills of its folds…

Do we feel a decorative Thanksgiving vignette shaping up on the fireplace mantel?

[Lots of Lemax Spooky Town miniatures via TheFind]

For a drop-dead-gorgeous family room, there’s any number of ways a spendy type could drop a few thousand without pausing for coffee… You could splash out on a flat-screen TV, for example, and pretend it’s modern wall art.

Or… you could tuck that traditional chunky-style TV set away in an amazing beech and mahogany cabinet that looks like a miniature building.

This is my original cupboard, inspired by a conversation with a friend who liked the look of dolls houses but wasn’t interested in the interior layout and all the scale furniture to go with it, and who often commented on how ugly the television set was, considering its prominent position in the room.

Patrick Owen (the craftsman behind Furniture Follies) says he’s looking at ideas for incorporating other materials — mosaic, for example, or marble and natural stone patterns — into the highly original cabinets.

I love the use of stained glass in the terrace of row houses that are his Kitchen Cabinets, and the chimney-pot detail on the Honfleur Cupboard.

Ah, these cabinets are going to turn up in my dreams!

Here’s a question for the creative jewelry artists in the crowd: have you ever used model railroad supplies to make a $1400 necklace?

Some of the most astonishingly original pieces I’ve seen in ages (thanks to Di Overton for spotting the dangerously pretty rings) have turned up in Sarah Hood’s landscape jewellery collection — inspired and inspiring!

My personal favourite in Hood’s new line is the aforementioned one-of-a-kind Bush/ Branch Necklace, made of tiny sterling silver branches interpersed with those little fake “bushes” and “underbrush” you’d get to make a model railroad landscape.

It comes with a cherry wood and glass shadow box, so you can show it off on the sideboard or wall when it’s not sparking up your little black dress.