Air Dry Clay Christmas - DIY GIFTS & DECORATIONS easy project ideas

Hi and welcome. Today I'd like to share with you some of my air dry clay ideas, especially for Christmas. If you're new to my channel I'm Sarah and I love everything creative and I love air dry clay projects. So grab yourself a block of air dry clay and join me to see how many wonderful Christmas creations we can make from our block of air dry clay. So I really hope this video gives you some ideas and inspiration for your air dry clay gifts and DIY Christmas decorations, ornaments, gift ideas, everything. Just have fun and enjoy your air dry clay projects. I've been busy here rolling out a small ball of air dry clay to approximately a third of an inch in thickness. I've drawn out these angel wings and I just need to cut these now. So use a knife if you have a knife but if you don't have a knife don't worry you can use either a pin or a little piece of metal like this. The air dry clay cuts really easily and I'm a big believer of using what you have around your home to create your creations. So there we have our basic shape and we can just use a finger or a brush just to smooth down those edges. Then I can go in and add the little details of the feathers. Don't forget to roll up the remaining clay and we can use that in our projects in a few moments. To smooth out the edges I like to take a damp brush and smooth around and make it all perfect before letting it set and dry. You can roll the clay thinner than this to begin with but as a beginner it's recommended to go a little bit thicker so you have a more robust structure and it's easier to remove off the table like this and easier to work with. As this piece is a little bit more delicate I've just placed it on some baking paper and it's easy to move around and work on like this and then once it's dry it will lift straight off. Don't forget to add a little hole for hanging the angel wings up. This isn't then completed yet so I have fully let that dry and now going in with some sandpaper just to tidy up any loose edges. Our air dry clay angel now needs a body and so I'm going to use some wool to add this in. You can use yarn or string for this. I have a piece of cardboard here a little bit longer than my hand and I'm simply going to wrap my yarn and wool right around this six times. Before doing this part and once the air dry clay is dry also make sure you seal the air dry clay in your choice of top coat. Cut the six strings off and take it off the cardboard and then we're simply going to loop this around our angel wings head just like this over the top there and pull down so that the two loops at the bottom come together. When I first tried this I did it with many many strands but I ended up with too big a body up at the top so what we're going to do is we're going to take that cardboard again and we're simply going to make another small tassel to add in. I've gone round and round the cardboard with my wool many times you can do this as much or as little as you like depending on how full you want the angel skirt to be. So we can remove this and then take another piece of wool and just make it into our little tassel and then we're going to add this in at the back of the wings and tie it in place. Once your air dry clay is dry you can also paint it obviously and you can make these absolutely any colour you wish and use different coloured wools and yarns and strings and see how your design turns out. I'm going for quite a neutral Christmas this year so lots of my Christmas decorations are going to be whites and neutrals. The tassel is tied securely in there now and I'm simply taking my scissors and just tidying up the skirt so that all the wool is the same length. Add some wool or string to the top and then you're ready with your first air dry clay decoration and it's beautiful. You could give these as little gifts or decorate your home with them for Christmas and the holiday season. If you'd like to use my template for the angel wings then you can do with this template here you can find it in the description below. So that was the first of our air dry clay Christmas projects and now we move on to number two and we need the little tree or any design of your choice for this one. This is a little Christmas tea light holder so I'm using a battery-operated tea light here. I have a thick piece of air dry clay rolled out so I'm just using the tea light to indent where I want that tea light to sit when it's dry. I then have my circular cutter and I'm simply going to cut this out. Pressing down just distorted the shape a little so I'm just making sure that the tea light still fits in. Then I'm just taking the damp brush to make sure the space is just a little bit bigger than the tea light because the air dry clay does shrink a little bit when it dries. I've made that clay nice and smooth again and I'm going to roll it out to approximately a third of an inch again. I've cut out the paper tree template and I'm using this to cut around and create our little Christmas tree. Use whatever knife or tool you have available this is simply just a table knife that I keep in my craft box ready to use for this kind of project. Really take your time and enjoy the process. I really love using air dry clay and I find it really therapeutic to use and it's so forgiving too if you do make a mistake and you can roll it up and try. So there we have our lovely Christmas tree shape. I can use my finger or a paintbrush and we can just tidy up the outsides. As this is for a tea light I now want to create some holes for the light to shine through. You can use a skewer or a straw or even a pen or a pencil for this and keep making lots of holes until you're happy with the decoration. If you want to do something other than a Christmas tree you could do a snowman an angel or a little house or anything else of your choice. Take a pin or something similar and score half of the outside ridge of this little circular piece and then I'm adding some air dry clay slip around this as the little bit of glue and we're going to attach our tree to this. Once we pick the tree up we can also give it a nice tidy up at the back. I'm also scoring the tree at the back at the base and we can attach this on in this way. So the slip will act as the glue and then we need to take a tool or a knife to blend these two sections together to make sure they stick and then you can take a paintbrush and smooth it out. You will need something in there just to add as a support while the air dry clay dries. The clay is fairly thick at the base so this will take quite a few days to dry completely but once it is fully dry you can paint and decorate it in any colour of your choice and then make sure you seal the clay and then add in your little tea light and I think it's absolutely beautiful. I really love this one. Moving on to our air dry clay Christmas idea 3. I have some stone coloured air dry clay here but you can obviously use any colour of your choice and with the little template that you'll also find on the template sheet we're going to make these cute little bear pins. These make really wonderful Christmas gifts and are great for stocking fillers too. The thicker you cut out your pins the more durable they will be once they're dry so that's up to you. These ones are fairly thick so just cut out your little bears just like this. I have other videos where I make air dry clay pins so there's lots of clay pin ideas on those videos too along with more free printouts too. These are so fun to make and you really can make so many out of a pack of air dry clay so it's a really affordable DIY gift idea. Now I'm smoothing out my remaining air dry clay ready to roll it and make some more little bears out of this clay. The bears are now completely dry and I have some acrylic paint and a very fine brush and I'm simply going in with lots of details. With these I just needed to do three coats of the acrylic paint until it built up enough colour. I like to listen to some music put the TV on and just relax and enjoy painting these. I find painting these air dry clay creations really therapeutic. Leave your little bears to dry and then you can add some pin backs to the back of them. I like to scuff the back you can use some sandpaper or an emery board like this scuff the back so that the glue adheres much better to that and the clay. I simply then super glue these to the back let them dry completely and you're ready to give your pin a top coat and finish it off so that it's protected. As an alternative you could also add a little peg on the back of these pins and then they become little Christmas card holders. For these ones I've chosen to use my trusty little bottle of nail varnish it's a top coat this one doesn't actually go sticky after it's been on. Lots of people don't like using nail varnish but I think it's fine so just use your choice of top coat whether that's a spray lacquer a varnish or a craft medium like Mod Podge. I sure would love to receive these as a gift. We're now going to make some more air dry clay decorations and I've rolled the clay out really quite thin for this one and then I have some cookie cutters and I simply am cutting out lots of discs of the thin clay. Take a skewer and make lots of holes all around the perimeter just like this. These are really simple and easy Christmas decorations to make and you can make absolutely loads of them and decorate your tree and your home with them this festive season. Make a hole in the centre and tidy up the edges and then let them dry. Once dry I'm giving mine a coat of Mod Podge just to make sure that they are sealed. I have some embroidery floss and so that's what I'm going to create the colour on mine with but if you have some wool or string you can do the same with this. I've simply tied a big knot on the end and I have an embroidery needle and I'm just going in and out and in and out to create a pattern just like this. You could get creative and do some stars, hearts, squares, any other shapes and put some little holes in and get creative. Add some thread, some string and some wool and see what designs you come up with. All of my air dry clay videos are for inspiration and you can interpret them in whatever way you wish. Once you've gone all the way around and created this pattern you can tie the string off at the back and then create a loop to let it hang up. I think these are really simple and effective and a great way to decorate your home this Christmas. So I hope you give them a go and make some. Here I have another really simple air dry clay Christmas decoration, a little house. Roll out the clay to a thickness of your choice and then simply cut out your little house shape and once cut as always smooth out your edges. You can personalise all of your clay items and so we'll do that with this one and I'm simply adding on the year and so you can add in this with some little stamps like these. You can personalise them with your family and friends names as well. Add a little slit at the top for the ribbon and then set them aside to dry. Once dried you can paint them as you wish with some acrylic paint and then make sure you seal them and then add some ribbon at the top and they're ready to adorn your tree. You can find this template in the description below as well to create yours and also in the description below is my link to Ko-fi. Some of you lovely subscribers asked if you could buy me a Ko-fi then of course you can and you can use that link in the description below. Your support is appreciated in every shape and form. You can get some great little cutters from the craft store. These are nice little star punches and so I'm creating a few little pieces with these. If you can't get hold of these then you can use the little template of the star and cut them out using a knife. From the air dry clay I've cut out a larger star with a cookie cutter and made five skewered holes in the base like this and one at the top and then I've let it dry and then I've just gone over with a bit of light sandpaper. Now that it's all smooth I'm going over with a coat or two of mod podge just to seal that clay. You can do all sorts of shapes with your air dry clay this is a really simple one with stars. So I've just got some cotton here and I'm threading on the little stars and I'll just tie those on and I'm going to let them hang from the larger star and they're a really pretty decoration. Just make sure you do double or triple knots just to make sure that the cotton stays in place. I've added two little stars on the outside hole there and then one on each of the three in the centre. I've added a bell and some ribbon and I'm really pleased with this Christmas decoration. This is a super quick and simple project where you just need a little block of clay you can do it round like this or square or anything of your choice. You want to use quite a chunk of clay at the bottom especially if your branches are a bit larger and I've just gone out and got some branches and I'm just simply placing those into the air dry clay. Make sure it stands up if it doesn't you could add a rock at the bottom or some more air dry clay simply let it dry you can put some white spray paint into the branches if you like and hang some little decorations in there and I think it's a really lovely quick and easy project. It's so nice to make personalised gifts at Christmas and so you can give a gift of some sweets some biscuits some chocolate or with this one some tea and so with this project we're going to make some air dry clay tags to go on those gifts. This little template is on the sheet that is in the description below and you can use this and I'm using the technique that I did for my little bee coasters and if you want to check that out you can check that on this video. I'm using the technique as a template so that I can paint over it later. Then you can cut your shape out leave it for a couple of minutes then remove the paper to reveal the text. Once the clay was fully dry I then went over with a fine brush and some acrylic paint. As it's a tag don't forget to add the hole before it dries You can fill your jar with whatever you wish to give as a gift and then label it with the appropriate label and I think it looks beautiful and lovely to give as a gift so enjoy. Here I'm making a little Christmas house you can use the template or you can just get a piece of card and draw out a little house to begin with. A lot of my subscribers asked if I would make a little house and so here is a little house vessel which we can use as a little vase to put some holly in or some dried flowers in this Christmas or a little tea light at the base. Roll out a thick slab of clay and then you simply want to cut out as we have in the rest of the projects just cut out your house shape. So here we have the front and the back of our little house and then out of the front one we can cut out those little windows. Something like a sharp scalpel makes sure that you can get right into the corners and get those little windows out. If you struggle with this bit and it's a little bit too delicate you can of course leave them all intact and then paint on those little windows at the end. Smooth out with a little bit of water on your finger or on a brush. As I've done my walls quite thin I like to leave these two to dry at this stage so I'll dry them fully and come back and make the rest of the walls. I roll my clay out on a smooth non-porous tile so once they are fully dry there's nothing for them to stick to and they just slide right off like these have and then take a bit of sandpaper and smooth all of these down ready to make the other walls. I'm making the other walls much thicker than these walls but if you want to do everything in one go and not let it dry in between just make sure all of your walls are all really quite thick so that the whole piece stands up. So now I'm making these side walls just using the front walls as a slight template. So there's my two side walls and now I'm just taking another chunk of clay and making quite a thick base. Where the wet clay meets wet clay you want to add the score and slip method and where the dry clay meets the wet clay you want to add a little bit of water onto the dry clay so that some of that wet clay gets a chance to absorb into it and therefore stick to it. So I've just positioned where I want the front wall to go and scored where those side walls will go and I'm also scoring here where that front wall will sit and adding a little bit of slip all along all those score marks. Just take your time with all of this process and make sure that all of this clay will stick together. I just like to do the front wall so that I have a bit of stability while I'm working but as I say you may well prefer to add it all while it's wet. Once in place we can then blend the wet clay here into the dry clay and here we just need to score where it joins and we're going to repeat that method and blend in and join the sides of the clay. So if you are a beginner I'd just make sure that all of your walls of clay are really thick so that they stand up and they're nice and robust. If they're too thin they just become a little bit too flimsy. It does take quite a bit of time to blend and to get all these pieces to attach together but you'll get there and hopefully enjoy it in the process and then as I add each of the walls on and I'm happy with it I can then cut away and leave our base behind underneath. There are other ways of creating little boxes like this but this is how I do these little houses. To make those joins even more secure roll a thin coil of air dry clay and add this behind every one of your joins and blend it in as we have before and that will give you quite a bit more strength and make sure that your clay does stick together. Once everything's in place then smooth it all out and set it aside to dry. After I'd let it dry I did have a few slight cracks so I just went in with a little bit of water and a little bit of fresh clay and just filled those gaps in and then let it dry once again. Paint these in any colour combination you wish and you're left with something really beautiful. You can make two or three to go together as a little collection and I think they're rather beautiful. I hope you've enjoyed my air dry clay Christmas video and it's given you some inspiration and some ideas. There's lots of other ideas for air dry clay and other projects on my channel so please go and take a look. Thank you for watching and bye for now.