Getting Crafty – Snowflake Ornaments (you can do with toddlers!)

I love Christmas and this year now that Ariella is older I wanted to incorporate her crafting time with Christmas too. Making an ornament seemed to be the perfect solution as Ariella still does try and put certain things in her mouth. The instructions really are left for you to setup with a quick fingerprint from them, this was perfect for Ariella. Once I had made one with her I knew that these would make excellent keepsakes for the rest of the family, we soon set about making more ready for Christmas.

These ornaments are made out of polymer clay that is baked in the oven to harden then painted with acrylic.

You’ll need –

• Polymer clay – I used a white clay as in the original instructions, but you could mix it up with any colour and make different shapes to suit your theme
• Themed cookie cutters, what ever you fancy. The example is with snowflake ones but you could go for gingerbread men, Christmas trees, present shapes.
• Some kind of poking device, the original guide linked below recommends a straw but I had great luck with a wooden skewer as I could control the size of the hole better. Depending how big your cookie cutter is you may not want the same sized hole.
• A little plastic rolling pin, something like the Playdoh ones will do
• Gold Acrylic paint, you could use any colour if you would like to.
• Paint brushes, definitely you will want some small ones for painting inside the imprints left by the rubber letter stamps and the finger print hearts.
• Gold paint pen, I used a sharpie.
• Ribbon, whatever would suit your theme is fine
• Baking paper – the guide suggests foil but I actually found baking paper was less sticky.

Acquiring all the various pieces is the only downside, clay, paint, brushes, letter stamps, ribbon, permanent markers it does definitely require quite a few things. Probably best to visit a craft store or go online to find all the items. I found the Fimo clay quite hard, you need to warm it up by kneading it a lot but once that part is done then it was very easy to roll out. Ariella when we made these was still putting things in her mouth a lot, so I rolled it out and pressed the clay using the cookie cutter. Then laid it out ready for her on her table, she did her finger print heart under close supervision.

Once you’ve stamped out your child’s name using the rubber letters then it’s time to pop them in the oven, I decided to go with fifteen minutes which was perfect. The oven stinks after by the way, but it soon disperses just don’t go putting your nose near the door when you open it. Let them cool and they should be suitably solid, at which point you can then crack out the paint and brushes to start getting really creative. Something to do while they are napping as it’s not a toddler friendly painting activity. Once everything is dry then tie the ribbon in place and it’s ready to either put on your own tree or box up for gifting.

I wrapped the little gems in some boxes which were wide enough but also shallow with some tissue paper inside to keep the ornament safe while in transit and tied up with a festive ribbon. I then packaged them with parcel paper and once ready posted them.

If your toddler is less likely to put the clay in their mouths they could help you knead the clay with the little roller. Alternatively you could try making them from salt dough.

You can find the instructions to make these yourself here at Cutesy Craft’s website.

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