One of my favourite things about Christmas is making a new addition to my growing collection of tree ornaments. Every year I either make, find or buy a few special ornaments that will remind me of years gone by for Christmases to come. As you can probably imagine, my tree is colourful and mismatched - a bit like the rest of my home, and myself! I usually make gingerbread cookies for my son and I to decorate and hang off the tree, but these days they don't even make it to the tree they get snapped up so fast! So this year I wanted to make something that had that same delicious Christmassy smell, but that would actually last. And I'm pretty enamoured with the result! For our DIY scented Christmas tree ornaments, colourful tin can shapes form the casing for a little pouch of Christmas spice to hide inside...

For our crochet ornaments we used a Coke can which was super easy to pierce all the way around, and seeing as the biscuit tin was much tougher to pierce, we made fewer holes and held it together with paper fasteners. If you had the strength (and the patience!), you could of course pierce it all the way around like the can in order to give it a crochet edge, but we actually really like the way they turned out with the bolt-like paper fasteners!

For the crochet can ornaments, you will need:

• a few empty soft drink cans
• aviation snips (special super sharp metal cutters)
• a tailors pin
• a blob of blu tack
• perle cotton
• 1.5mm crochet hook

For the vintage tin ornaments, you will need:

• a vintage biscuit tin
• aviation snips
• a sharp skewer
• a blob of blu tack
• paper fasteners

Cut two identical shapes out of your can/tin. *Please be careful!! The metal is SO sharp!* We used a simple circle shape. Using a pin or skewer, make evenly spaced holes around the edge of your ornaments, being sure to keep a blob of blu tack at the back of the tin to protect your surfaces. For the crochet ornament, make lots of little holes all around the edge, going over them with the point of the crochet hook to make sure they will be crochet-able! For the tin ornament, make fewer, bigger holes with a skewer.

Holding the two circles, wrong sides together, begin crocheting around, stopping halfway to put in your Christmas spice scented packet...

Cut a square of cloth and fill it with your Christmas spices, fold up and secure with a pin.

Pop the spice packet into the ornament and finish crocheting it closed.

When you complete the circle, chain 30 and secure the loop with a slip stitch back where you started.

For the vintage tin ornament, we made four holes and then secured the two circles together with paper fasteners with the spice packet hidden inside.

x Elisalex