Bottle Cap Baby Jesus

After collecting and brainstorming ways to reuse plastic lids, I thought it would be fun to come up with a bottle cap Christmas craft. Once I had the idea, I gathered up various miscellaneous crafts supplies and got to work. I think bottle cap baby Jesus turned out pretty cute! Here’s what I did:

Supplies:

1 large lid (I used an orange juice lid)
1 small white lid about 1″
1 blue milk cap lid
free printable baby face printout
1 ” circle punch
straw (purchased in the Nativity section at local craft store)
cotton balls
scrap piece of muslin, felt, or fabric
1 craft stick
foam stickers
star button
white glue
strong glue (like E-6000, hot glue, etc)

Directions:

1. Fill the bottom of the big lid (in my case the green lid) with white glue. This is a perfect job for little kids to do. Press in a wad of cotton balls. Then add more white glue on top of the cotton balls. Press the straw down onto the glue making sure to cover the cotton balls.

2. Wrap a piece of muslin around a couple of cotton balls. Glue the fabric edges together with white glue. Then glue the “swaddling cotton ball” in the big lid.

3. The next step is optional: Using strong glue (I used E-6000) adhere a blue lid on to a craft stick. Then using strong glue, adhere a star button to the center (you could use a star foam sticker instead.) Then use strong glue to adhere the craft stick to the “manger” lid. This step is necessary if you want to include the star over the manger. If you are working with young children or a group of children, you can skip this step.

4. Print out the baby face onto paper. Use a 1″ punch to punch out. Carefully spread a little white glue on the back of the printout (if you get white glue on the front you run the risk of smearing the ink). Place on the front of the white lid.

5. Position baby Jesus into the swaddling cloth. You might need to put a cotton ball under the lid so that is rests on an angle. If you have the star craft stick in place, make sure the Jesus cap is touch the stick. Use a dab of strong glue to attach the lid to the craft stick. If you don’t use the star, add some glue on the bottom of the lid and adhere onto the fabric.

6. (Optional) Decorate manger with foam stickers.

There you have it! A cute nativity decoration made out of recycled plastic lids.

Maureen is a former elementary school teacher who now has a classroom of 6 at home. She blogs at Spell Outloud sharing toddler activities and homeschool highlights.