Violet
13/12/21
Christmas Decorations
Homemade decorations make lovely keepsakes that can be kept for years to come. Great to make with a class to take home for Christmas or to make at home and give to grandparents!
Dough Recipe
You can make Christmas decorations out of salt dough or air dry clay but this recipe for dough made from cornflour and bicarbonate of soda makes a lovely white sparkly decoration that looks extra special.
500g bicarbonate of soda
250g cornflour
750ml water
Measure out the bicarbonate of soda and cornflour and then pour in the water into a saucepan. Mix together over a medium heat. After a couple of minutes the mixture will start to thicken. Continue to mix over the heat until the dough looks like mashed potato. Take the saucepan off the heat, take the dough out and put it into a bowl to cool down. Once cool, tip out and kneed the mixture until it forms a smooth dough (adding a little more cornflour if it is too sticky).
Santa Handprints
Roll out the dough and then place the child’s hand on top, getting them to press down slightly. Carefully trace round their hand with a clay tool and then cut out the dough. Make sure you then put a small hole in at the top so it can be hung up when finished.
Once your decorations are cut out you can either put them in the oven or leave to dry. If you put them in the oven it should be at a very low temperature, about 120 degrees celsius, for around two to three hours. If left to dry make well in advance as they will take a good few days before they are ready to decorate.
Once dry it can be decorated, we used acrylic and googly eyes. A couple of layers of pva glue or a glaze for clay definitely improves the final decoration.
Cookie Cutter Christmas Decorations
Using the same dough you can also use cookie cutters to create decorations. Allow children to choose a cookie cutter shape and cut it out.
The cookie cutter shapes can then be decorated once dry, using acrylic paint, finger print painting, permanent markers and lots of glitter, it is Christmas after all! Like the handprints, these decorations look a lot better with a glaze over the top to complete them.
All photos and illustrations in this blog post are Whizzbots Images.
Other images on the site may be Shutterstock, Public Domain or Creative Commons Images, which are credited appropriately.