This Christmas, we want to make sure your children have some easy, fun, and creative Christmas craft ideas to make at home or in the nursery. We’ve put together a number of how-to guides with different crafts for the festive season, with some resource recommendations to help.

This Christmas craft how-to blog will bring you all the steps you need to create some clay tree decorations!

What you will need:

• Air Drying Clay
• Wooden Rolling Pin
• Bio Glitter
• String or lace
• PVA Glue
• Glue Spreaders
• Jingle Bells for decoration

How-to create:

Step 1: Start by making sure you have a clear surface, and cover with newspaper or a cover to keep it clean. You then need to break the clay into sections and let the children use their rolling pins to roll the clay flat. You can use as much clay as you like.

Step 2: Use stencils, shape cutters or free hand to cut out your Christmas shapes in the clay. You might have to help the children if you are doing this free hand, but if they’re using shape cutters it should be straight forward enough. Here, we used shape cutters to make Christmas trees, stars, and stockings. When forming your shapes, don’t forget to use a pencil to poke a hole through the top of each one for your string.

Step 3: Once the children have their shapes, leave them to dry. This should be fairly quick. Whilst waiting, get all the things you need to decorate your clay shapes. We used Bioglitter and jingle bells, but you could also use pipe cleaners, tissue paper, paint, and feathers to name a few.

Step 4: Use your glue spreaders to apply PVA glue to your clay shapes and begin decorating however you like! Once you have finished, allow time for the decorations to set and the glue to dry.

Step 5: Once dry, cut a piece of string, ribbon or lace and thread it through the hole you made earlier, before trying. Your clay decorations should now be ready to hang on the tree!

We hope you enjoyed this craft, check out our Inspirational Activity Ideas section for more of the same. Merry Christmas!