Holiday Ornaments and Gift Prints: Fast, Beginner-Friendly Projects for December

December has a way of arriving faster than the gift list gets finished. The good news for anyone with a printer: most of the best holiday gifts and decorations are genuinely fast prints, and the right filament finish can make a two-hour print look like something you bought, not something you rushed out the night before.

Here are ten quick projects, sorted roughly by how much time they'll actually take off your plate.

One planning note before the list: multi-plate printing is your best friend in December. Most of these projects are small enough that several fit on one build plate at once, which means an overnight print or a print running while you're at work can knock out four or five gifts in the time it would otherwise take to babysit one project at a time. Plan your evenings around loading a full plate before bed rather than one item at a time, and the list below goes a lot faster than the individual print times suggest.

Under 30 Minutes

1. Gift tags with names. Search MakerWorld or Printables for "customizable gift tag" — most designs let you swap in a name before slicing, and a small tag prints in well under half an hour. A genuinely nice touch for a gift that would otherwise just have a sticky-note label.
2. A keychain set. Search "holiday keychain" for quick, low-material stocking-stuffer prints. These are fast enough to batch a dozen in an evening.
3. A snowflake string. Search "3D printed snowflake" for individual ornament-style snowflakes you can string together into a garland — each one is quick, and the visual payoff of a full string is bigger than the individual print time suggests. This is a good project to batch a dozen or more at once on a single plate rather than printing them one at a time.

30 Minutes to 2 Hours

4. An ornament set. Search "3D printed ornament" for classic round or geometric ornament shapes — most print in an hour or less and look genuinely finished hanging on a tree, especially in the right color. Make sure whatever design you pick has a built-in hanging loop, or add one in your slicer, before you print a whole batch and realize afterward that none of them have anywhere to attach string.
5. Cookie cutters. Search "cookie cutter" for custom shapes — a practical gift alongside a batch of actual cookies, and one of the fastest functional prints on this whole list. Keep in mind a printed cutter is a shaping tool that touches dough briefly, not a utensil that holds food, so treat it the same way you'd treat any other kitchen tool — wash it well and let it air dry between uses.
6. A phone stand. Search "phone stand" for a small, genuinely useful gift that doubles as a desk accessory year-round, not just a holiday novelty.
7. Mini succulent pots. Search "mini planter" for small pots sized for a succulent cutting — pair one with an actual small plant for a gift that's more thoughtful than it is expensive.
8. A coaster set. Search "coaster set" for a practical, easy-to-batch gift — print four or six in a matching color for a complete set.

Bigger Projects Worth the Extra Time

9. A small planter gift. A step up from the mini succulent pots above — search "decorative planter" for a larger piece worth giving as a standalone gift rather than paired with a small cutting.
10. A simple photo frame. Search "picture frame" for a printed frame sized to a favorite photo — takes a bit longer than the other projects here, but a printed, personalized frame reads as considerably more thoughtful than its actual print time suggests.

None of the ten projects above need anything beyond a standard 0.2mm layer height and default settings for whichever material you're using — this list is deliberately built around prints that don't require dialing in special settings under a deadline, since December is exactly the wrong time to be troubleshooting a new profile.

Why Silk and Metallic Finishes Suit Gifting

The single biggest lever for making a gift print look store-bought rather than homemade is finish, not the model itself. A plain matte PLA ornament looks like a craft project. The same ornament printed in a Silk finish looks like something from a shop shelf, with zero sanding or painting required.

PLA Silk Pastel gives soft, gently reflective color that photographs beautifully on a tree or wrapped under it — a genuinely different look from standard PLA's flat matte finish, and one that reads as "finished product" rather than "hobby print" at a glance. PLA Silk Rainbow takes that same shine and adds a shifting color gradient down the length of the print, which looks especially good on taller pieces like ornaments or small figures where the color shift has room to show. For the full explanation of why Silk PLA prints shiny and how to get the cleanest finish out of it, see our Silk PLA guide.

For gifts with a slightly more substantial or premium feel — a phone stand, a photo frame, anything meant to look a bit more "finished object" than "ornament" — Metallic PETG gives a genuine metallic sheen along with PETG's added toughness over PLA, which matters for something that's going to get picked up and handled regularly rather than hung and left alone.

Both Silk finishes also tend to hide minor print imperfections better than a matte or standard finish would. A slightly visible seam line or a small blemish that would stand out on a flat matte surface tends to disappear into the reflective, slightly variegated look of a Silk print — which is genuinely useful when you're printing gifts quickly and don't have time for the kind of careful troubleshooting you might do on a display piece you're keeping for yourself.

Print Smart, Not Just Fast

If you're working against a real December deadline, batch your prints by color rather than by project — load one spool of PLA Silk Pastel and knock out several different ornament, keychain, and gift-tag designs back to back instead of swapping filament between every print. It's a small planning change that saves real time when you're trying to get a stack of gifts done before a specific date.

It's also worth printing a couple of spares of anything small and easy to lose — keychains, gift tags, small ornaments — since these are exactly the kind of items that end up misplaced between the print bed and the wrapping paper. A spare or two costs you almost nothing in material and print time, and it means a last-minute gift request doesn't send you back to the printer at 11pm on the 23rd.

Looking for something with a bit more glow for a holiday party on top of the gift list? Our glow and UV color-changing prints roundup has ideas that work just as well for a December get-together as they did for Halloween. And if you're printing gifts on a deadline this year, keep an eye out for our 2026 Holiday Giveaway — a year of free filament makes next December's gift list a lot easier.

Get Printing

None of these ten projects need exotic settings or hours of print time — just the right color and finish to make a quick print look intentional. Grab PLA Silk Pastel, PLA Silk Rainbow, or Metallic PETG from our filament collection and start working through your list this weekend.