Christmas Clay Ornaments Tutorial

How would you like to make your own decorations this year? They're fairly easy to make and you can personalise them.

What you need: 

DAS air dry clay



Cute cookie cutters and something
 to make holes with....



Rubber letter stamps for personalising

Mine were 99p from The Range

You will also need a rolling pin to roll out the clay with and some ribbon to thread through the tops of your ornaments. You can decorate them in loads of different ways so buy a variety of glitter paints etc.


Step one: Kneed a lump of clay and roll it out on a chopping board until it is about half a centimetre thick.
Use your fingers to smooth out the clay on the top. Cut out your chosen shape using a cookie cutter.

My cookie cutters were from Ikea last year.

Pull it carefully off of the board and smooth down all the edges and the back. You want it to look as perfect as possible as flaws show up a little more when they are dry. You will get little fibres that stick out around the edges, this is what you are smoothing down.

Step two: Using some sort of tool (mine is from a screwdriver set) make a whole near the top of your ornament.

Step three: Decorate! I personalised mine using a mini rubber stamp alphabet set. You simply need to press them into the surface.
You could also experiment with different textures by pressing anything you can find into the clay. Have fun with it!

Step four: Put them on a flat surface to air harden. This takes a little longer than 24 hours. I put mine on a baking tray lined with baking parchment.



To make the wave pattern at the bottom right, I used the edge of a round biscuit cutter.



You don't really need to use baking parchment but my
tray was a bit dirty!

 Step five: When they have fully dried and hardened, you can decorate them further. I have so far experimented with silver paint and white paint. On the personalised decorations, I plan to find something that will pick out the letter detail.

The ones above are still drying out, then I will paint them and add the ribbon. I'm planning to give them to my family for Christmas in some gift boxes that I bought.

This has been one of my favourite Christmas crafts! I hope you enjoy trying it out!