Wow, can you believe that it’s only 10 more sleeps to Christmas? We’re on the countdown in our house now that school has finished, but trying to keep the kids occupied with one of our favourite past times, Arts and Crafts. This year, with lots of gifts to send overseas to family, we decided to make a few of our own, and set to work making little tree decorations to send to Grandparents. This was the best activity for my kids as it involved clay – so exciting!! Clay is magical in our house – it guarantees peace and harmony for at least an hour…

Here are the “ingredients” for our clay decorations: We used small cookie cutters for the shapes, Fimo Modelling Clay (we used white but it comes in all different colours), interesting shapes to make patterns in the clay and Silver glitter paint to put the sparkle in. Oh and to finish them off we used red and white string to tie them onto our tree.

First we flattened our clay, and punched out different shapes. Then, carefully put holes in for the ties, and decorated with different patterns.

Once dry, our next step was to add some sparkles, and pretty ties….

….and here are the finished decorations! Since these were for Grandparents, we “engraved” them on the reverse with a personal message, or you could use fingerprints too.

We were having so much fun, that we made extras, then went for a walk to collect some interesting looking branches. Placing the whole lot in a large silver vase we stood back to admire our hard work….

Our finished decorations are not perfect, but I think that’s part of their beauty, and so much love and thought went into each one that was going to be sent overseas.