Clay Dough Ornaments

I have so many different recipes for home made art supplies. This is one of my favorite for an air drying clay. I like it better than salt dough, and we have used it to make all kinds of sculptures, beads, and ornaments in the past. This year, we have been making ornaments for the 4C of the UP, Great Start Regional Child Care Resource Center's Christmas Tree.

The clay is a lot of fun to play with. most of the children were more interested in playing with the clay rather than sculpting with it.... So we played..... we rolled it, and we squished it.... and then when the children didn't want to play any more... I molded the dough into round shapes.

roll the clay into a ball

squish the ball with a cup

You will have an almost perfect circle....

to make it perfect, I used the other side of the cup like a cookie cutter.

Then you will get a circle that has a small ridge

I used a straw to make a round hole in each circle ornament

This clay will air dry quite nicely. I wanted to speed up the process, so I put them in the food dehydrator.

When the circles were dry, the children decorated them by painting them. We used liquid water colors, tempera, and acrylic paints. We also added some glitter for glimmer!

Here is the recipe:

Claydough

You will need:

1 c cornstarch

2 c baking soda

1 ½ c water

Food Coloring (optional)

Mix all ingredients in a sauce pan over medium heat, stirring constantly. Remove from heat when the mixture starts to look like mashed potatoes. The clay will thicken more as it cools. Knead and form into shapes! This clay will air dry or can be placed in a food dehydrator or low temp oven to dry.

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