Tutorial: Clay ornament/tags

 We made these ornament/tags for Crafty Night: November last night.

I LOVE how they turned out. I kept seeing them all over the internet, but mostly made

with porcelein clay, air dry clay, or salt dough. I was like, "Uh, what about plain old polymer clay?"

So I grabbed a big block of Fimo soft. (SUCH an awesome clay compared to my Sculpey III frustration last year!)

First thing I did was lay a piece of parchment paper onto my table. Wax paper would be fine too. Just so your clay doesn't stick to the table. And after warming a small piece of clay in my hands, I rolled it out with a rolling pin. That plastic orb thing in the picture is actually part of a two-inch plastic capsule from a gumball machine. It will be used later to cut out my shape.

 Next, grab a doily & press it into your clay by gently rolling the pin over it.

Remove the doily. The cool thing about clay is that if it doesn't come out the way you like it, you can smash it all up & start over.

(This is BEFORE you bake it of course!)

Use your "cookie cutter" of choice.

You can cut out any shape you'd like.

Use rubber alphabet stamps to personalize your clay piece.

These are perfect for gift tags on prezzies if you embellish with someone's name.

And these go from prezzie-to-tree-ornament in a jiffy!

I'm all about the 2-in-1 gifts!

Use a straw to make a hole in the top.

Bake in your oven according to the directions on your specific clay.

Fimo soft is baked at 230 degrees F, for up to 30 minutes. These ornaments were baked for 25 minutes in my oven.

Loop on some string & you're done!
(From the 12.34 oz brick of Fimo soft, we got about 36-40 of these sized ornaments.)

You can paint or seal these if you want. But it's not necessary.

I am going to try "staining" some so the stamping really pops.

I'm totally diggin' the owlie "dream" ornaments & will have some in the shop later this week!

♥