Today I want to share an easy Christmas ornament craft made from polymer clay. We have a stash of this stuff and the girls (age 7 & 8) love to make and bake things with it, so making some Christmas ornaments was a great excuse to pull it out again. Keep in mind that polymer clay can be very stiff and tricky to work with, so younger kids might be better off using air drying clay or salt dough for this project. My girls need me to soften up the clay for them still, but once it’s soft it’s just like using plasticine.

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You will need:

• Polymer clay in a range of colours (I’ve used yellow, red, white, black and purple)
• Wire and jewellery-making wire cutters
• String
• Small star-shaped cookie cutter
• Optional flexible plastic cutting mat. I’ve discovered that using one of these makes the clay much easier to work with and also stops it from leaving smears of colour on our kitchen table.

How To:

1. The clay will be very stiff at first and you need to pull off a small piece and roll it in your hands or on a plastic mat to soften it up. Once it is nice and soft flatten your piece into a small round disk and press the small star-shaped cookie cutter into the disc to create your star.
2. Roll two small white balls for the eyes and a small red, pink or purple sausage for the mouth. Press them gently onto your stars.
3. Roll some very tiny black balls to create pupils for the eyes
4. Cut a small length of wire (approx 10cm), twist it around a pencil to create a loop and trim any messy ends off. Poke this into the top of the star. This step will probably be too tricky for younger kids, an adult will need to do this. If you are working with younger kids and using air-drying clay you can use a larger cookie cutter and simply poke a hole in the top of your star with a skewer for the string.
5. Bake in the oven following the manufacturers directions on your packet of clay. I’ve found their directions for baking times to be very vague, but as a general rule bake on a low heat for 20 minutes (oven temperatures vary considerably so its hard to give an exact cooking time and temperature).
6. Tie string through the loops and hang on your tree!

They would make cute gift tags too, and are small enough to use as favours inside DIY Christmas Crackers.

You might also like:

• Make some polymer clay school bag tags
• Or try combining polymer clay with hama beads to create colourful pendants
• Have you tried crafting with shrinky plastic? We love that too
• We’ve also made some fridge magnets using polymer clay

You can find tons more Christmas craft ideas on our Christmas Crafts board on Pinterest!