Kraftmas 2015: Polymer Clay Ornaments

For the past four years I have given my hubby a personalized ornament to put on our tree. This will be our fifth Christmas together and we have a special new addition to our family which is so exciting! This Christmas I decided to try my hand at making our family ornament out of polymer clay. I knew it would not look at good as the ones that I was buying in the mall especially because I have never worked with polymer clay before, but it is more special to make it for him myself!

The inspiration came from an ornament that I saw on Etsy of faces for each family member wearing Santa hats with the name on the brim of the hat. Looked easy enough, and possibly the least time consuming. I bought clay for the heads and hats, and a pack of green clay just in case I could think of something to do with it.

I started off by making a square out of the white clay to which I would attach the three heads. Next, I made the head with the beige clay. I cut one strip of the clay, rolled it into a ball and then flattened the ball a bit then placed the head on the white square.
 
For the hats, I used a strip of red clay and kneaded it into a flat piece by starting with a round ball then rolling it into a cone, then flattening the cone into a triangular piece. I twisted the top of the triangle to give the hat a little dimension.
 
I then wrapped the hat around the head on the square.

Finally, I cut a small strip of white clay for the brim of the hat and also made a small white ball for the tip of the hat.

I repeated the same process for all three members of our family.

Finally, I cut a paper clip so that I had the round end and stuck the sides into the top of the ornament.

To set the clay, I followed the package instructions and baked the ornament in a preheated oven at 270 degrees on a foil-lined cooking sheet for approximately 30 minutes.

Once the ornament was set and cooled, I used paint and a thin black sharpie to make the faces and write our names on our hats!

With the extra clay, I made another ornament that was not as involved. Used the red and white clay, I rolled a thin cylinder of each and then twisted them together like a candy cane.
 
I then took the twisted clay and made it into some holiday words, like "NOEL" and "JOY"

I baked the words as above. I turned mine into an ornament, but these would also be cute to tie onto Christmas gifts!