As Christmas Jumper Day (today) rapidly approached, we found ourselves searching online and looking from store to store for Christmas jumpers that would be just perfect for Robin and Amelia. Kai was already sorted with a very keen Xbox jumper. The two girls had a lot of wishes for their perfect sweater, and we had said they could be as particular as they wished. In the end we ended up finding a Santa-themed sweater dress that Amelia loved, but when asked if she wanted to make their own, both her and Robin fell in love with the idea. They kept mentioning making their own instead, so we decided to go forward and do just that.
As it turns out, it’s not very hard to create your own sweater. All you need is some puff paint or glitter glue, a hot glue gun, and an assortment of things to glue to it. Bows, bells, beaded necklaces, pompoms, sequins and ribbon were among our selection, but you can really use anything you have. These things aren’t going to make it through a wash, so feel free to dig out your art supplies – almost anything in there is applicable here. We picked up a few cheap, plain jumpers from the shop for this project, but you could use spare jumpers you have lying around if you’d like.
After I laid out everything I had, Jupiter put a bit of cardboard inside the sweaters – this way if any hot glue leaked through the layer they wouldn’t end up glued together. Then we let the kids go wild – although for Robin she did need a bit more help. She went for a tree design – choosing the colours while Jupiter drew out the design – before taking over to write her name and add extra details. It was the same for gluing items on – Robin choose what went where, but we stuck them on for her so that she wouldn’t need to use the hot glue. Amelia, on the other hand, wanted to make a reindeer (to match her reindeer hair clips) and put a reference picture on her tablet. From there, she made her own version, then decorated it with the help of us adults (due to the hot glue gun).
We made a mistake once we thought the sweaters were done – we hung them up before they were dry! This caused a slight bit of running – but it was quickly seen and fixed. You will need to wait until the jumper is completely dry before you hang them up, otherwise the glue and puff paint will run. Puff paint dries fast – but the glitter glue takes a bit longer, so you will want to make these at least 24 hours ahead of time – especially if your child is likely to make big pools of the stuff on their jumper like Amelia did for the nose.
All in all, they came out pretty good – kids always think things look much better when they spend some time making them themselves. It became an entire activity – and I am sure it’s something we are going to do in the future, possibly as a new tradition!
This post is apart of our Blogmas series, with each and every post being about Christmas or Winter.
Lovely post! This is such a good idea and the jumpers look fabulous! I agree with you about searching everywhere for a Christmas jumper and thank you for this idea!
It’s such a fun craft!
Luckily, there are plenty of ultra-festive (and outrageous!) options for ugly Christmas sweaters this year from the best women’s Christmas sweaters to buy online to sweaters you can DIY at home with some of your go-to Christmas decorations. Not all of them are your standard ugly knits, either there are even ones that can hold your wine bottle or transform you into a full-on Christmas tree ! Whether you prefer funny, cute or just plain tacky, pick from these best-ever ugly Christmas sweaters for plenty of holiday cheer then make sure to wear ’em proudly while you’re decorating the tree, binge-watching the best Hallmark Christmas movies or completing anything else on your holiday to-do list.
There are tons and tons of options.