Clay Mushroom Ornaments

Hello!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  Ours was filled with the slow and steady completion of projects around the house and some fun with our boys, all while eating our fill of turkey and all of the fixings.  Throw in some Christmas decorating inside and out and it was a flurry of activity, I tell you!  I wish I could say that I had pictures to share from our weekend, but Jason only managed to snap a few with our camera while I took a few more with my phone.  It is funny.  I used to be attached to that camera and felt like the boys rarely saw me without that thing.  Now, I use my phone to take pictures.  I've gotten lazy!  I need to find a happy medium.  I'll be working on that in the next few weeks.

Today, I have a delightfully easy and whimsical project to share with you!  Last year, I purchased the sweetest glass mushroom ornaments from Crate and Barrel.  How fun, I thought, it would be to make these myself!  And so I did!  

Here is what you will need to make your own clay mushroom ornament:

Clay, I used Original Sculpey Clay in white (the oven-bake kind)

A wooden skewer

Glitter glue

Glitter

String or twine

To begin, you will need to gather two pieces of clay roughly the same size and form one into a long tube-like shape and the other into a flat, round disk, similar to this:

Take the flat disk shape and press your thumb into it, so that it forms a cup-like shape.  Then, take the tube-like shape and flatten one end of it so that it can stand up.

Your pieces should look like this when you are done.

Carefully push the two pieces together to form your mushroom.  To make the hole at the top, use a wooden skewer.

The hole should look like this after you remove the skewer.  You are now ready to bake your mushroom.  To do this, follow the directions on your clay packaging.

To decorate your mushroom, simply brush with glitter glue and sprinkle with glitter.

After the glue has dried, you are ready to hang your mushroom.

Have you made any ornaments this year?  Have you started decorating for the holidays yet?

Thank you for reading!  Have a wonderful day!

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Home Stories A to Z

Clay Egg Ornaments

I have been in the mood to work with clay ever since I saw my sister Amelia's moon mobile, which you can see here.  (Yes, it is as magical as it sounds).

I thought it should be easy enough to create my own Easter ornaments for our little Easter tree.  Growing up, my mom always had a little Easter tree in our living room.  She (or my dad) would spray paint a big branch white and that big branch would be stuck in a big Terracotta pot filled with dirt.  Pretty pastel lights were strung on those branches, bunny and egg ornaments were hung, and grass seeds were planted in the dirt.  That grass never failed to arrive just before Easter and it was lovely.

I really wanted to recreate that memory for my boys in our home.  So, here is what I did to make my own ornaments.

I shaped that clay into a little flat egg.  Then, I carefully pressed various plants into the clay.  In this picture I used some thyme.  I also used rosemary, boxwood, and fern.  I used a wooden skewer to do the polka dots. That skewer was also used to poke a hole in the top of each egg so that I could hang them onto our tree.

I baked the clay according to the directions on the package.  After they were done, I tied some thread onto each egg and hung them onto our tree.  They are by no means perfect, but I like them nonetheless!

I also decided to experiment with some color on a few of the ornaments.  I called Amelia, who happens to be a pretty amazing little artist (I can say these things because I'm her big sister) and asked her if I could borrow her supplies.  She kindly brought over some wax pastels and some tiny paint brushes.

I simply colored onto the eggs and lightly brushed them with a bit of water to soften the color a bit.

I'm not sure yet if I like the simplicity of the white ornaments or the splashes of spring color that the painted ones have.  I think I'll experiment around a little yet with both options.  I'm sure you know already that I'll keep you posted...  I'll be back soon with another Easter project I'm excited to share with you!

I'm linking to:

Centsational Girl

Serenity Now

Tatertots and Jello

Home Stories A to Z