Handmade Holiday Gifts – More Ideas

Our November Challenge – Handmade Holiday Gifts is perfectly timed, and we’re hoping it will get you started. Even if you usually give bigger gifts to family and friends, handmade gifts can be the perfect thing for co-workers, teachers, and service folks in your life like that nice UPS man who brings all your Stampendous packages! We hope you’ve got an idea or two to share with us! If so just click on our linky tool and add your link!

BlogStar Asia King has some gorgeous clay hearts to share with you today! What a fun and easy gift to duplicate and give, on top of packages, with home-baked treats, or just wrapped in a cello bag with a pretty ribbon as a delightful remembrance. These would also be lovely for a Scandinavian or Winter Wedding as favors!!

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Hello Stampendous fans! Asia King here today with a quick and easy Christmas gifts project – handmade clay Christmas tree ornaments. I ♥ Christmas – that’s what this post is all about :). And we will also do some cooking today, too! So let’s begin.

‘Ingredients‘

For this project you will first need: Stampendous cling Sweater Square stamp, Jumbo Cardinals set, STAEDTLER® FIMO®air microwave clay in white, a heart shaped cookie cutter and a small rolling pin. (STAMPENDOUS NOTE: The Jumbo Cardinals are sold out on our website, your local store may still have some, or you can substitute Q163 Holly Basket instead)

‘Preparation‘

Start by rolling out a chunk clay onto a non-stick mat. The rolled piece should be a bit  bigger than the cookie cutter. I find that about 2mm thickness is sufficient. Press the cookie cutter into the clay and remove the excess clay. Gently remove the cut shape from the cutter.

Ink up the Sweater Square stamp with Vermillion Archival ink.

Gently tap an embossing buddy over the clay heart and stamp the pattern. Tapping the clay with the embossing buddy first helps to release/peel off the clay from the stamp without tearing.

Using a wooden skewer stick add a small hole at the top for a string.

To jazz your hearts up a bit you can also swipe the Boss Gloss around the edges and heat emboss with Shabby White Embossing Enamel. Now you can either leave your hearts to air dry for 24 hrs or you can pop them in the microwave for 10 minutes instead :).

And while you are waiting for the microwave to finish and to gather strength before working on the next batch, you might as well have a quick cat nap :).

This is another suggestion for decorating your hearts. Using a permanent ink (I used Clearsnap Donna Salazar fast drying Mix’d Media Inx®) stamp the holly branch from the Jumbo Cardinals set. Give it a minute for the ink to dry, then colour the image in with Inktense Pencils. I have not tried using any other medium or markers. But the clay surface is quite moist and soft at this point, so if you want to experiment, bear that in mind.

If you are curing your hearts in the microwave, this will heat set the inks. If you are letting them air dry, you might like to seal them afterwords with a clear varnish or with a Clear Detail Embossing Powder.

‘Serving Suggestion‘

When you are finished with decorating the hearts, add a sparkly thread or ribbon for hanging onto a tree and pop them in a festive goodie bag along with some sweets.

Add some simple matching gift tags decorated with sparkly snowflakes (Crystal Micro Glitter sprinkled over the 3D Foam Snowflakes from Scrapbook Adhesives by 3L).

‘Nutrition‘

Per serving: 0 calories, 100 yrs of love, 100 years of happiness, 200 yrs of laughter

Enjoy!

I hope you like my Christmas ‘cooking’ recipe and I can’t wait to see what delicious treats you are going to share! Thank you for popping in today – till next time!

Big crafty hugs