A Non-Crafty Mom Makes Ornaments (DIY Textured Clay Stars Tutorial)

Every year, I bust out my almost nonexistent crafty alter ego for approximately 24 hours and help my children make Christmas ornaments. We give them away to friends and family and generally have a lot of fun. This year, we decided to try our hands at clay, and it went well, so I thought I’d share how we did it, in case you’re not crafty and have to fake it for a day, too.

First, here are all the supplies you’ll need:

• Clay: 2 options (pick one)
  1. Sculpey white oven-bake clay
  2. Cornstarch and baking soda mixed with heat and water using this recipe
• Roller
• Clay texture sheets
  • Here is an example, but you may want to look around and choose your favorite.
• Star cookie cutter: we use the middle size from a set like this
• Straw: or something like it to cut the hole for hanging
• Sharpie metallic pain pens in silver and gold
  • Medium point
  • Fine point (we used both)
• Glitter paint
  • Gold
  • Silver
• String
  • Silver baker’s twine
  • Gold baker’s twine

Step 1: Make the clay

You only have to do this step if you are making your clay from scratch using this recipe. If you are using Sculpey white oven-bake clay, you can skip to step 2.

Step 2: Roll out the clay and texturize it

Like I mentioned above, we used acrylic rollers for this step, which makes the clay nice and smooth. I aimed for about 1/4 thickness. Once the clay is rolled out nicely, put the texture sheet on top of the clay and roll the texture into it. This takes a little practice — you have to experiment with your clay to figure out what level of pressure is necessary to get the texture into the clay without making the clay too thin.

Make sure all of your clay is textured (we ran multiple textures side by side, even, which was fun) before going to step 3.

Step 3: Cut your stars and holes

This is like cutting cookies, except you have to add a hole for hanging. Because you’ve already added the texture, they’re going to look something like this when you are done:

Step 4: Bake your stars and let them cool

Public service announcement: MAKE SURE YOU ADD HANGING HOLES BEFORE YOU BAKE!

Use the directions on the side of the package if you are using Sculpey white oven-bake clay, otherwise use the directions in the recipe. Let them cool entirely before moving on to Step 5.

Step 5: Paint and paint!

The first layer of paint was done using Sharpie metallic oil-paint markers. After that, they painted glitter over the top. The glitter also acted like a glaze, which was a nice bonus. Make sure you let these dry before moving on to the last step.

Step 6: Put a string on it!

Tying some pretty baker’s twine finishes the project and you’re ready to give these babies away!

Here’s one of our final products: