DIY Clay & Felt Christmas Ornaments

I know I'm a week late in saying this, but I hope everyone (in the States) enjoyed their Thanksgiving weekends. It was busy, but fulfilling, and I still feel the gratitude in my heart for a loving, supportive family. Aww, I'm so sentimental.

Last weekend, we dug our fake tree out of storage so we could switch gears from feelings of thankfulness and turkey burps to generosity and Christmas spirit. The tradition I've made for myself in the past couple of years was to save a handful of vacation days at work and take time off between Christmas and New Years to give myself a lovely little holiday break. During last year's break, my sister and I made a bunch of Christmas ornaments using clay and felt. We decided on 'food' as the theme and made these really cute bits and bobs.

I wanted to share them right away - because of how adorable they were - but I was really patient and basically waited an entire year to share these. This isn't really a tutorial, because we didn't use any patterns or special methods. We just used our imaginations and basic sculpting and sewing skills. But, I thought I would share in case you wanted to give it a go.

For the clay ornaments, we used the lightweight, air-dry Crayola model magic. We brainstormed a little and made a few sketches, but in general, we just went for it. After they dried, we used acrylic paint to color them. I also added a little glitter and used puffy paint on a few to make them a little cuter.

Head pins were inserted inside of the clay to allow us to attach string so we could hang these on the tree. The headpins also gave us something to hold onto while we painted these cuties.

Sister didn't join me for this part, but I grabbed loads of felt and made little felt ornaments as well. These were so much fun to make and even though they were more time consuming, unlike the clay ornaments, I didn't have to wait for them to try to color them in. They're already colorful!

This was a great activity to do with a mug of hot cocoa. I'll probably be making more during my self-appointed winter break this Christmas. And again, I'll probably wait another year to share those.

Here are the (mostly) finished ornaments:

They look so great on our tree. It looks amazing all decorated. I really love the pancakes and the popcorn and the burger. You know what? I love them all.

xoxo.