Crafting personalized holiday stockings is a fun, easy, and economical Christmas craft idea that everyone in the family can enjoy. Spending a family evening together decorating Christmas stockings is a great bonding experience, and can easily become a much anticipated annual holiday tradition in your home.

Getting Started:

To start, you just need a few purchased or homemade Christmas stockings, a bottle or two of glue, different colors of glitter, and some small Christmas ornaments to add decorative touches to the stockings. You probably already have these items in your home, but if not they are easy to find and inexpensive to purchase.

You'll need to make sure you have one stocking for each family member. Children will also have great fun decorating stockings for the family pets, so you may want to have a few extra stockings on hand for that purpose.

You might even want to have the kids create stockings for aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and other relatives. These personalized decorations make terrific handmade gifts for many of the people on your holiday shopping list, particularly when you fill them with homemade holiday treats.

Easy Personalization Technique:

Many people like to put their names on their stockings. One of the easiest techniques for doing this is to write the name on the stocking with glue, and then sprinkle glitter on top of the glue. Simply shake off the excess glue, and you are left with a personalized stocking.

You can dress up each personalized stocking by add a small Christmas ornament decoration near the stocking hook. Voila! You have personalized stockings ready for Santa to fill. Keep in mind that working with glitter can be messy, so it's a good idea to put newspapers on the surface where you are working for easy clean up.

Getting Fancy With Personalized Holiday Stockings:

If you want a personalized stocking that is much more ornate, you can add additional embellishments by gluing several small Christmas ornaments to the stocking. You can easily add additional adornments with glitter as well. Simply draw any design you want on the body of the stocking with glue and add glitter using the same technique utilized to write your name. Popular glitter designs for holiday stockings include stars, snowflakes, and round Christmas ornaments.

Create a New Family Holiday Tradition

Families who decorate stockings together will enjoy watching the progression of their children's artistic abilities over the years. Hand decorated stockings are terrific keepsakes, and can even become heirloom items. The great thing about creating personalized stockings is that there is no right or wrong way to decorate the stocking. Each member of the family can create a stocking design that expresses his or her individuality and creativity.