Decorating Christmas Stockings

We already have our family stockings hung up in our living room, but our family room mantle was looking rather bare. When I was roaming through the dollar store a few weeks ago, I came upon the perfect solution. Stockings! Yup, the dollar store sells these great cream colored stockings that are just begging to be jazzed up.  And that is just what we did.

Your stockings will probably turn out better than ours. I had two three year olds and a one year old doing this activity, and while they had a great time, the finished results weren't as "nice" as you would get with an older child. If you are more into process than end product, try these with your toddler. If you want things to look a little neater, then do this with kids who are 5 and older.

Supplies You Will Need:

• Plain white or cream colored stockings
• Fabric paint
• Sponge brush
• Holiday stickers
• Holiday Stencils (I found cupcake stencils at the dollar store and they worked perfectly)
• Masking Tape

Before we began, I used masking tape to tape some stencils to the stockings.  

I put some green, red and gold fabric paint on a plate to make a palette for the kids.

I wanted to test one, so I made a tree in the corner using green fabric paint. It looked good so I demonstrated to the kids how they could stamp the fabric paint onto the stockings using their sponge brushes.  

I don't have a ton of photos of this step because the one year old needed a bit of help with this.

When the stockings were dry, I removed the tape. I was pretty happy with how they turned out, especially when you consider the age of my tiny crafters. But they were still lacking a little something. I remembered I had gotten some glittery holiday stickers at the dollar store and pulled those out. The kids had a blast sticking them all over their stockings.  

Here they are hanging by the chimney with care. I have to say the kids have been way more into these than they were into their regular stockings in the living room. I plan to add their names on top in glitter because glitter makes everything better, and I need to know where to put the coal.