How To Make Holiday Ornaments With Your Printer

Here's a creative and fun holiday craft you can do at home with your printer.

By Sarah Jacobsson Purewal, PCWorld    May 17, 2011 9:00 pm

Christmas trees start going up the day after Thanksgiving, so why not make this year's tree unique with handmade, printable tree ornaments? It's a fun project that everyone can enjoy--and it might even save you some money.

1. The InDesignSecrets blog has a fun, somewhat geeky ornament project for you to try: an octahedron that you can create in Adobe InDesign, print out, and fold for hanging on your tree. Don't worry if you're not an InDesign or Photoshop expert; the InDesignSecrets blog walks you through the entire process. In case you just want the ornament and want to skip all the steps involved in creating it yourself, the blog also offers an Adobe Creative Suite ornament template that you can print out as is and start folding.
2. For another geeky twist, Spacestation42.com has what it calls Fractal Fidgets papercrafts. They're 12-sided shapes with pictures of fractals on each of the sides--just string some ribbon through them and you'll have enchanting, dodecahedral ornaments.
3. Canon's Creative Park Website features a number of fun paper ornaments that you can print out and fold into impressive papercraft projects. Canon has all sorts of traditional ornaments, including holiday bells, candy canes, miniature stockings with poinsettia decorations, present boxes, and regularornamental balls. Canon's papercraft projects include templates and assembly instructions, though you'll have to provide your own scissors, glue, ruler, pen, and printer.

Other fun holiday printer projects include calendars, gifts, and greeting cards. And in past years, we've described in detail how to print your own greeting cards, how to make custom photo gifts, and how to design calendars.