Once the ornament was painted black I began to add in the primary colors of the finished ornament: red and green. I left select parts black, as seen in the below picture, which I later went back and painted over with a gold paint to create the appearance of accents of antiqued gold on the ornament.

The smaller circles on the ornament (it has 3 large circles and 3 small circles) were filled with craft glue and I added red rhinestones to the small circles to add a little glitter to the ornament when it is on the tree.

The next step, after the paint and glue was fully dried, should have been to paint the ornament with a sealant, however, I have nothing on hand to seal it with, so I left it plain.

The next and last step was to add a decorative ribbon for hanging the ornament on the tree or wherever it will be hung for the holidays.

And here you have it – the finished hand made holiday ornament created from polymer clay.  Start to finish this ornament only took a hour or two to create and if you are making more than one at a time then you can create a tree’s worth of ornaments in just a few hours.

Happy Holidays!

I created the wire hanging frame from a strong piece of florist wire, just a few bends to make it stand up sturdily enough to hold the ornament while it was fired in the oven.

A final examination of the ornament is vital at this stage, because if there has been any damage caused to it you will have a hard time repairing it after the piece has been fired.  So take a moment before you fire the piece to examine it and make sure that it is free from damage and major blemishes.  I wanted a rougher hand made look to it, so I did not worry about things such as finger prints or dimpled areas on the ornament, only major damage to the overall appearance of it.

After baking – Let it cool!

After the piece has been baked be sure to allow it to cool before handling it or you could get burned – particularly by the now heated wire frame that supported it in the oven.

When it has cooled you can look it over and fix any problem areas with a very fine grit sandpaper, or leave it as is for a rougher handmade look.

Once the aluminum foil has been completely covered (don’t forget the inside of the hanging loop), then make thin ropes of polymer clay with which to create the decorative elements such as the circles on the sides and the raised sections along the top and base.  I used a small sized knitting needle to smooth the clay ropes into the base covering of clay.

Other pattern ideas could be to make a braided rope from the polymer clay and wrap that around the ornament, or create a basket weave pattern or diamond patterns.  The decorative scheme for the ornament is only limited by your creativity.  I have plans for one ornament to have a hallowed out side on it for placing a small figurine, or you might make ovals on the sides in which to insert printed pictures of Christmas scenes or family photographs to make keepsake ornaments.

An ornament with the year on one side and a family picture on the other, or a picture of the tree that you had that yea, would make a wonderful keepsake ornament for many years to come.

Different designs can be created by changing the look of the foil base. If you want to have a longer ornament or one that has very thin sections on it, then you will want to start with a base of a length of floral wire and wrap the aluminum foil around the wire to build up your ornament.

The foil size of the ornament should be only slightly smaller than the size you want the finished ornament to be so that you will not have to use an excessive thickness of clay in building the ornament.

In the next step I will explain layering the clay onto the ornament to create the designs that you want on the finished ornament. While you are working with the aluminum foil you might want to create several ornament bases or several different styles of base so that you can work on building multiple ornaments at once.

I started making ornaments for the tree out of polymer clay and have discovered that there are endless ways that you can create these wonderful and unique ornaments.

I am going to walk through the process for creating an ornament in the following tutorial, giving step by step information on how I created this lovely ornament.

You can create any shape of ornament you want to from the same basic steps that I used to create this old fashioned ornament. I will be providing additional ornament designs later to give you ideas for more ornaments to create.

This ornament was made in under an hour and has an aluminum foil base covered in Sculpey brand polymer clay.

I will be posting full details on the creation of this ornament in the next few posts.