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DIY Christmas clay ornament: Easiest tutorial to make clay at home

Make your own Christmas clay ornaments with our easy DIY tutorial using ingredients from your pantry! We’re on a mission to help you create a stylish and festive home without spending a fortune. This DIY Christmas clay ornament tutorial is a quick and fun craft activity, perfect for adults and kids alike. Use it to make beautiful personalised Christmas tree decorations, gift tags, name place settings and also homemade gifts.

You can get as creative as you like with your ornaments. Keep the look minimalist and restrained using a circular or star cookie cutter, or go totally kitsch using fun shapes, brightly coloured paint and glitter!

Related article: Adorable concrete Santa decor Christmas DIY
Related article:
17 space saving Christmas trees: Alternative Christmas tree ideas

DIY star ornament
Close up of our DIY Christmas clay ornament
DIY Clay ornaments

Items you will need

  • 1/2 cup corn flour (or corn starch if you are in America)
  • 1 cup baking soda
  • 3/4 cup water
  • Pot
  • Tea towel
  • Rolling pin
  • Wooden spoon
  • Measuring cups
  • Cookie cutters
  • Baking tray
  • Baking paper or alfoil to line tray
  • Toothpick
  • Paint, glitter or other items to decorate
Items you will need to make DIY Christmas clay ornament
Items you need to make DIY Christmas clay ornaments

Steps:

1. In a pot, add the corn flour, baking soda and water and mix until smooth.

Place ingredients into pot
Place ingredients into pot
Mix together until smooth
Mix together until smooth

2. Cook over medium heat until it thickens and forms into a fluffy dough.

Cook until dough forms
Cook over medium heat until dough forms

3. Turn off the heat and place a damp tea towel over the pot until the dough has cooled.

Place damp tea towel over until cool
Place damp tea towel over until cool

4. Once the dough has cooled, knead it out on a clean work surface that’s dusted in corn flour.

Place dough onto smooth surface
Place dough onto smooth surface dusted in corn flour
Work until smooth
Knead until smooth

5. Roll the dough out until it’s about 1-3mm thick (if it’s too thick, it is more likely to crack or warp when you bake it in the oven).

Roll out with rolling pin
Roll out with rolling pin

6. Use a cookie cutter to cut out the shapes you want and then carefully remove the excess dough.

Using cookie cutters to make DIY Christmas clay ornament
Using cookie cutters to make shapes
Carefully remove
Carefully remove excess dough

7. Place the forms onto a baking tray that’s lined with baking paper or alfoil and use a toothpick make a small hole at the top of the ornament so you can hang it.

Lay onto baking dish
Lay onto baking tray
Make hole in clay
Make hole so you can hang them

8. Bake in the oven for 5-10 minutes at 80 degrees. Flip the shapes over and bake for another 5-10 minutes. You’ll know they are ready when they become bright white all over.

Tip: it’s better to under-cook them than overcook them. If they are on the under-done side, you can leave them in the sun to harden for a day or two but if you bake them for too long they may crack. Leaving them in the oven too long can also cause them to discolour or burn.

9. Once they have cooled, you can hang them on your tree or paint and decorate them however you like! We placed several plain white stars on our tree and used the rest as personalised gift tags. Keep on scrolling to see how they look as gift tags!

Make your own Christmas ornaments
Hang your DIY Christmas clay ornament on your tree or keep reading to see how you can use them as gift tags
Easy DIY ornaments

DIY personalised gift tags

This tutorial can also be used to make DIY personalised gift tags and here’s how!

1. If you’re not confident at hand lettering, print off the names in the fonts you like. You may also like to check out our hand lettering for beginners tutorial here.

Print out names
Print out names in your preferred fonts

2. Then on the reverse side, use a pencil to shade over the name.

Use pencil to shade reverse side of name

3. Place the paper over the ornament and use your pencil to trace out the name to leave an imprint on your clay tag.

Trace onto ornament
Place the paper over your ornament
Then write over the name to leave an imprint
Outline guide left on ornament

4. Use a gold Sharpie pen (or whatever colour you want) to write over the pencil outline and then attach to your gift.

Finally, write over the guide line in a marker of your choice
Make your own gift tags
Special way to wrap gifts using DIY Christmas clay ornament
Easy DIY clay gift tags
Gold star gift wrapping with DIY Christmas clay ornament
Our DIY Christmas clay ornament tutorial also makes a fab personalised gift tag

Tip:

You can leave the surface of your ornaments smooth or make impressions into the dough before you bake them — think cookie stamps that allow you to imprint words, leaves or flowers, or even your dog’s paw!

Check out more Christmas inspo

Disclaimer: This article was originally published in November 2014 and has been updated with new images and information. It contains some affiliate links. This means, if you purchase an item we may receive a small commission without any extra cost to you.

Gina Beschorner Style Curator

Welcome to Style Curator, your destination for daily interiors inspiration, styling tips, reno advice, home tours and DIY projects!

We're on a mission to help you create a home you love. And with plenty of tips and tricks, tutorials and other home inspo, we give you all the tools to achieve it!

I’m Gina, Founder and Interior Designer, and you can read more about Style Curator here.

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