How to Make Air Dry Clay Ornaments for Christmas

Cut a chunk off the block with a knife and work it between both hands until it warms up and the surface stops cracking at the edges. Straight out of the packet the clay is stiff and a little crumbly. A minute of kneading sorts that out.

Put a bowl of water with a damp sponge beside you before you start. Wet your fingers on the sponge every so often as you work. That film of moisture is what keeps the clay from gripping your skin and tearing when you let go.

Lay a wooden guide on either side of the clay, set the roller across both guides and roll. The roller rides on the wood, so it cannot squash the clay any thinner than the guides are thick. Every ornament in the batch ends up the same.

Jane glued strips of an old wooden blind together for hers, and two long wooden rulers stacked up do the same job. She rolls with a glass bottle rather than a baking rolling pin, because air dry clay is not food safe and anything it touches is out of the kitchen for good.

Choose a sprig with a flat spray of needles and lay it on the rolled clay. Press it down with your fingers so it touches all the way along, then roll the bottle over the top once, firmly, in one direction only.

Peel the sprig away slowly from one end. The needles leave a fine fern print behind. It looks like very little at this stage and it sharpens up as the clay dries, so trust it. Lace ribbon prints the same way, and an embossed rolling pin covers a whole sheet in one pass.

Slide the cutter around over the clay until the part of the pattern you want sits inside it. Working out where to put the cutter is the fiddliest decision in the whole project. Press it straight down and keep it level so the edge cuts cleanly the whole way round.

Peel the waste clay away from the outside of the cutter before you try to free the ornament. Pulling the ornament out of a full sheet stretches it and drags the pattern out of shape. Ball up the offcuts and re-roll them for the next one.

Load the letters into the stamper one at a time, reading back to front. JOY goes into the block as Y, O, J. Get that wrong and you press a mirror image into the clay and have to roll the ornament out and start it again.

Hold the block square over the ornament and push it straight down with even pressure right across the row. Lift it off without rocking it. If one letter lands shallow, press again in the same spot rather than picking at it with a tool.

The cutter leaves a slightly ragged lip around the edge. Push a finger into the wet sponge, then run it around the rim of the ornament while the clay is still soft. Two passes usually rounds it off.

A lot of people file or sand the edges once the clay has dried. Jane skips that and the edges come out smoother than sandpaper would leave them. The same damp finger lifts out fingerprints and small dents anywhere on the face of the ornament.

Stand a metal straw on the tab at the top of the ornament, push it down through the clay and twist it as it goes. The twist shears the plug loose instead of dragging it sideways. Pull the straw straight back out.

A plug of clay stays up inside the straw and it will push back out into the next ornament you punch. Drop the straw into the bowl of water between holes and the plug washes free. The cap end of an eyeliner pen cuts the same size hole if you have no straws in the house.

Lay the ornaments flat on a rack or a sheet of baking paper, somewhere out of direct heat. They shift from gray to chalky white as the water leaves. Thin ones are done in about a day, thicker ones take two or three, and the thickness you rolled to decides that more than anything else. Turn them over once a day so both faces dry at the same rate.

Once an ornament is white the whole way through, cut a length of jute twine and thread it through the hole. Slide on three white wooden beads, bring the ends together and tie a knot. They hang on the tree, on a gift, or sit on the table as place names.