These faux gingerbread ornaments are a fun and easy DIY Christmas craft. The best part is, they’re almost free! I made them from cardboard and puff paint, so they look just like real gingerbread cookies but won’t spoil or crumble. If you’ve got extra boxes from holiday shopping, you can turn them into beautiful ornaments for your tree, gift tags, or even a festive wreath. Follow this step-by-step tutorial to make your own budget-friendly, no-bake gingerbread ornaments this holiday season.
How to Make DIY Faux Gingerbread Ornaments (Almost Free!)
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I’m not a baker, and you don’t need any flour, sugar, or icing for this project. No oven required either! All you need are a few cheap or free items. Those cardboard boxes from holiday shopping are perfect for this fun, budget-friendly Christmas craft. As a bonus, I’ve included printable gingerbread cookie templates so you can easily trace and cut out the shapes.
I love oversized ornaments to fill up gaps in your Christmas tree, which is why my ornaments are larger. But you can make them any size you’d like.
I have made numerous oversized homemade ornaments for our Christmas decor over the years. Check out my foldable cardboard 3D stars, DIY paper fans, and paper bag snowflakes as ornaments.
Other ways to make gingerbread ornament crafts
Cardboard gingerbread ornaments
Felt gingerbread ornaments
Gingerbread salt dough ornaments
Baked gingerbread ornaments that you can eat
Options 3 and 4 are definitely too heavy for my liking. It’s so much easier to decorate a Christmas tree when the branches don’t get weighed down.
Materials needed
brown cardboard boxes
white puffy paints (craft paint might work too, but puff paint looks more like icing)
As an added idea, you could also use details of red or green puffy paint or glue peppermint candy to the ornaments.
Gingerbread ornament templates for printing
The below list of links will take you to a new browser tab from which you can either download the files or print right from the tab. You can see what I mean in the below image.
If you want to make smaller gingerbread ornaments than mine, just print the file at a smaller percentage. You can usually adjust that in your printer window.
If you love working with templates, I also have more designs in my DIY embossed tin ornaments tutorial. You can emboss the traditional shapes from this post or try my cat, moon, sun, star, and evil eye templates.
How to make your own gingerbread ornament template
Making your own template is easy, too, if the shape is symmetrical. The assortment of templates I added for you to use are much harder to create on your own.
If you want to make your own template from another symmetrical shape, like a Christmas tree, bell, or gingerbread man ornaments, for example, then all you have to do is fold a piece of paper in half, draw on half of the shape, cut the shape out, and then unfold the paper. Voila, you have your own template. (I’m also showing these steps in my video tutorial)
Or you can just trace various cookie cutter shapes onto cardboard and cut them out but those will most likely be a lot smaller than the ones I am giving you. I love them a lot larger.
Video tutorial
I made a video tutorial to show you what I did exactly. Use the triangle in the center of the image to view the video and if you are on a mobile phone, hold the screen sideways. In case the video doesn’t load for you then you can also watch it on my YouTube channel.
Step-by-step instructions
Follow these simple steps to turn cardboard boxes into charming faux gingerbread ornaments. A fun, DIY Christmas craft that costs almost nothing!
Step 1: Prepare your gingerbread templates
Print your templates or make your own as l showed you above. And then cut out the shapes with a pair of scissors. (If you are making smaller ornaments then you can just trace gingerbread cookie cutter shapes onto the cardboard in the next step.)
Step 2: Trace your template onto Brown cardboard with a pencil
If you positing the templates the right way, you can get several ornaments out of a standard-sized cardboard box.
Step 3: Cut out Gingerbread shapes
If you are doing this with small kids then cut the cardboard out for them. This part can be a bit difficult depending on how thick the cardboard is and what scissors you are using. To cut out the rounded shapes on the heart, angel, and snowflake I like using an X-ACTO knife with a sawing motion as shown in my video but be careful not to slip and cut yourself. The star is the easiest to cut out since it only has straight lines.
Step 4: Draw on gingerbread design pattern
Draw a gingerbread pattern with a pencil. I have some examples coming up for you below. Have fun with it. It really doesn’t need to be perfect. I love doodling like this and it was my favorite part of this craft project.
Step 5: Trace the gingerbread pattern with puffy paint
Trace the gingerbread pencil pattern with the puff paint to mimic icing. Slowly squeeze the bottle as you work your way around the pattern. It’s literally just like icing. Then let the puffy paint dry.
Step 6: Add ribbon for hanging
You can hot glue or pin some ribbon or twine to the ornaments for easy hanging. I like just sticking them inside the tree where there are gaps.
Or you could just poke holes into the top of each ornament shape as you would do with real cookie dough and then thread a ribbon or string through that.
I love doodling the patterns onto the gingerbread ornaments. That is definitely my favorite part and don’t take it too seriously, it’s ok to mess up. Have fun with it. They don’t have to be exact.
Below you can see examples of what I did with the gingerbread stars, snowflakes, hearts, and angels.
Do you love stars? Check out my customizable folded paper stars. You can make any size and as many points you want.
RELATED: Do you love snowflakes? check out my free snowflake svg file for Cricut poster board snowflake ornaments. So easy to make. Or my macrame snowflakes as part of my macrame ornaments blog post. Another affordable snowflake craft are easy toilet paper roll snowflakes and toilet paper roll stars as Christmas ornaments. And last but not least, my paper doily snowflakes. Love how delicate they look on my mantel.
Different ways to decorate the holidays with gingerbread Christmas ornaments
Gingerbread ornament tree decoration (the most obvious)
I used a string and hung some of the gingerbread ornaments from that to create a garland (by the way, those battery-operated candles are my favorite). I also made larger gingerbread houses that I placed on the mantle. The easy Christmas canvas painting of a snowflake is also a DIY of mine. (View all the gingerbread decor in my recent home tour.)
you can use them to make a gingerbread ornament wreath
or gingerbread ornament wall decor
I also love using them as gingerbread tree toppers
Or you can use the gingerbread ornaments as embellishments, as I did on my paper lunchbag snowflakes. The gingerbread snowflakes and stars are perfect for that.
With the above photos, you can already see what direction I’m taking this year as far as my Christmas decor goes, right? I’m loving it so far and can’t wait to share it with you soon for a Christmas home tour blog hop.
RELATED: You might also like my super easy macrame gnome pattern where I’m using scrap yarn to make cheap little gnome ornaments.
Where to buy gingerbread ornaments
Even though thisis such an easy DIY porject, not all of us like crafting, am I right? So if you don’t want to make your own gingerbread ornaments, or maybe you just want to make a couple and buy the rest because it takes too long then I found some for you to buy below. There are many great options.
Tschüß and I wish you all a happy holiday season.
How to make no-bake gingerbread ornaments
Yield: gingerbread ornaments
Active Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes
Difficulty: easy
Estimated Cost: $0-$15
Learn how to make these easy, realistic, faux gingerbread ornaments from cardboard. A nearly free Christmas craft that looks like real cookies!
Materials
brown cardboard boxes
white puffy paints (craft paint might work too, but puff paint looks more like icing)
pencil
printer and printer paper
pretty ribbon
Tools
X-ACTO knife
ruler
different sized scissors
Instructions
Prepare your gingerbread templates Print your templates or make your own as l showed you above. And then cut out the shapes with a pair of scissors. (If you are making smaller ornaments then you can just trace gingerbread cookie cutter shapes onto the cardboard in the next step.)
Trace your template onto brown cardboard with a pencil If you positing the templates the right way, you can get several ornaments out of a standard-sized cardboard box.
Cut out Gingerbread shapes If you are doing this with small kids then cut the cardboard out for them. This part can be a bit difficult depending on how thick the cardboard is and what scissors you are using. To cut out the rounded shapes on the heart, angel, and snowflake I like using an X-ACTO knife with a sawing motion as shown in my video but be careful not to slip and cut yourself. The star is the easiest to cut out since it only has straight lines.
Draw on gingerbread design pattern Draw a gingerbread pattern with a pencil. I have some examples coming up for you below. Have fun with it. It really doesn't need to be perfect. I love doodling like this and it was my favorite part of this craft project.
Trace the gingerbread pattern with puffy paint Trace the gingerbread pencil pattern with the puffy paint by slowly squeezing the bottle. It's literally just like icing. Then let the puffy paint dry.
Add ribbon for hanging nobbiYou can hot glue or pin some ribbon or twine to the ornaments for easy hanging. I like just sticking them inside the tree where there are gaps. Or you could just poke holes into the top of each ornament shape as you would do with real cookie dough and then thread a ribbon or string through that.
6 Comments
These are great and seem doable!!! Thanks for sharing and Happy Holidays!?
These look really good, I can’t wait to make them! My husband actually suggested using caulk instead of puffy paint, and it comes in many colors! He suggested brown for the edges of the ornaments, so that you can’t tell it’s cardboard even from the side. Not sure if that would work since the bead you’re drawing is so thin and fine; maybe just for the edges would work. Thank you for this idea, they’re adorable and look like fun to make!!
Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry for seeing your comment this late. I’ve been getting a ton of spam comments, and it was buried amongst them. I really appreciate it, and it sounds like a wonderful idea. If you tried his ideas and they worked, send me some photos, I’d love to see them.
These are great and seem doable!!! Thanks for sharing and Happy Holidays!?
Thanks so much Jen! Happy Holidays to you too
What an inventive and sweet craft to reuse cardboard! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, I’m so glad you like it.
These look really good, I can’t wait to make them! My husband actually suggested using caulk instead of puffy paint, and it comes in many colors! He suggested brown for the edges of the ornaments, so that you can’t tell it’s cardboard even from the side. Not sure if that would work since the bead you’re drawing is so thin and fine; maybe just for the edges would work. Thank you for this idea, they’re adorable and look like fun to make!!
Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry for seeing your comment this late. I’ve been getting a ton of spam comments, and it was buried amongst them. I really appreciate it, and it sounds like a wonderful idea. If you tried his ideas and they worked, send me some photos, I’d love to see them.