How To Make A Christmas Diorama

Christmas Diorama: rustic Christmas decoration made from an up-cycled old drawer, simple and fun to make.

Christmas dioramas are such a fun and beautiful Christmas decoration.  You can make a diorama of any scene, ours is a woodland scene, and it's a perfect as a rustic Christmas decoration during the holiday season.

What's A Diorama?

A diorama is a 3-D model or miniature scene.  It's often detailed. like a miniature world or replica.  You could make a diorama depicting any scene.  For our Christmas diorama scene, we created a snowy woodland scene.

Supplies:

• old drawer
• drawer handle
• red wood twigs
• bottle brush trees
• toy plastic deer -mother and baby
• cedar pine cones
• cotton snow
• faux snow
• snowflake plastic ornaments
• hot glue

The Diorama Frame

I've been wanting to make a little Christmas diorama for a while now. I remember making a shoebox diorama as a kid.  For this diorama I thought it would be cute to make it in an old drawer. 

Turns out old draws can be hard to come by, they're little vintage treasures. They are usually part of a dresser or desk, as in 'not sold separately'. So, I'm giving you the heads up to put one on your mental list for the next time you're at an antique store.  You might also find one at a yard sale or a thrift store. I managed to find one in the fall at an antique fair -this project's been in the works for a while. It was maybe 5 dollars, but was missing the handle.

I found a handle that seemed suitable at a craft store and attached it to my little drawer, or the outside of the box.

I love how banged up and old this vintage treasure is.  It's the perfect size Great colour too, kind of a greenish-cream.

If you didn't have a drawer to use for your diorama base you could use a shadow box frame, or a small shallow wood box, like a tea box.  You could even make something similar in the small box from your old Christmas cards.

The Forest Scene

I filled my diorama with a little forest scene. I used my diorama for the Christmas season as part of my holiday decor, but since it's a snowy forest scene you could really enjoy it all winter long.  Since a diorama is a miniature scene, you need small items.

To create the forest I started out by adding in some real dogwood branch clippings.  I placed them at the back of the scene and used a little hot glue at the base to attach them.  We also used three different bottle brush trees, in different sizes.  I tried to create a little depth, by staggering the placement of the trees.  These are attached to the drawer with a little hot glue on the bottom also. You don't need a lot of hot glue, just enough to hold it in place.

In the center of the scene I placed two plastic toy deer, and a mama and baby facing in different directions.

I also added in some tiny pinecones from a cedar shrub.  These were perfect tiny size for our scene, and glued some into one of the bottle brush trees.

I used some cotton for snow, along with some fake snow sprinkled on top, and added a few of the cedar pinecones on top of the snow also.  The last detail I added was gluing some and plastic snowflakes to the back of the diorama.

Christmas Diorama

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Cook Time: 15 minutes minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes minutes

Author: Dannyelle Nicolle-Ramjist

Equipment

• hot glue gun

Materials

• old drawer
• drawer handle
• red wood twigs
• bottle brush trees
• toy plastic deer -mother and baby
• cedar pine cones
• cotton snow
• faux snow
• plastic snowflakes
• hot glue

Instructions

• ?Start with your diorama box base. We used an old vintage drawer, and added a new vintage looking handle to it. You could use any box, or shadow box for your base.
• Next build your scene. Start by hot gluing some twigs in the background. Add in some small bottle brush trees.
• Then add the deer toys to the center with some hot glue on their feet.
• Add some cotton snow on the bottom, and sprinkle some faux snow on top.
• Glue a few mini cedar pine cones in one tree, and add some on top of the faux snow also.
• Glue the plastic snowflakes to the back of the diorama box.

The drawer makes the perfect frame. It looks great on a little table, but I might hang it up on the wall. I don't think I'll manage to take it down after Christmas -we'll change it's name to -a winter diorama. 😉

Diorama Variations

There are so many different variations you could make on this craft.  If you want to change the forest scene, you could choose different animals to include.  Or you could create different subject areas all together. A great idea would be an indoor Christmas eve scene around the Christmas tree with lights, and gifts, and milk and cookies for Santa.  The possibilities really are endless.  Just be on the lookout for miniature items you could use to create your scene, and try to make sure that the scale of all your pieces works together so that the scene looks realistic.  That's the only real guideline when it come so to creating your own handmade Christmas diorama.

Ornament Variations

A variation on a Christmas diorama is to make diorama ornaments.  To create a Christmas diorama ornament version of this scene, you would need a very tiny deer and bottle brush tree that is small enough to fit inside of the ornament.  Look for clear plastic ball ornaments that open by splitting if half so that you can more easily add the diorama items inside.  Glue the twig and or tree and tiny deer to the bottom of the ornament on one side and then add in your faux snow, before adding the other side back on.  These make adorable homemade ornaments for gift giving or adding onto your Christmas tree. 

This Christmas diorama project was so much fun to create.  Mine was really simple with just a few items, but you could make it more elaborate if you wanted to.

With a Christmas diorama, life really is a party.  Happy Crafting!

More Christmas Inspiration

You might also like Gumball Machine Snow Globe here.

Also check out our Snow Globe Christmas Ornament here.

You might also enjoy Mushroom Christmas Ornament here.