Decorating Homemade Clay & Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments
Today we are going to decorate our DIY air dry clay and salt dough Christmas ornaments that we just made! If you are looking for easy and beautiful Christmas crafts, gifts and decor ideas, you will love this one!

Table of Contents
This is part 3 of our DIY air dry clay series. You can check out the first 2 parts here-

Part 1: Baking soda and cornstarch DIY air dry clay recipes and comparisons
Part 2: How to make ornaments and star garland using homemade clay or salt dough
*Some resources in article are affiliate links. Full disclosure here.

We will make beautiful watercolor style art hand painted air dry clay Christmas ornaments, and some ornaments decorated with natural materials. The same techniques can be applied to your salt dough Christmas ornaments

Today’s tutorial includes a detailed video showing you how to create art using watercolor markers or paint on these Christmas ornaments. It is so easy and so much fun, I didn’t want to stop! 🙂

Materials and tools to decorate air dry clay and salt dough Christmas ornaments
- I used hemp twine to hang the ornaments. You can also use peppermint twine, thin ribbons, or metallic strings.
- Paints: you can use any art supplies you have on hand. I LOVE using dual tip brush markers, watercolor, acrylic / craft paints, and even Sharpies or similar markers!
- LED fairy lights for the star garland

Make it portable
You can use many types of paints to decorate your DIY air dry clay and salt dough Christmas ornaments .
My favorite to use on the baking soda clay and salt dough ornaments are these dual tip brush markers ! You can also use regular markers like these or color Sharpies.

The glue and cornstarch dough dries differently to form a more water resistant surface.
You can use all the materials above except for watercolor. Acrylic / craft paints, Sharpies or similar markers work especially well on these ornaments, like the painted Christmas trees.

Don’t you think these air dry clay and salt dough Christmas ornaments would make great holiday crafts, gifts and decorations?

I also made some ornaments decorated with real botanical clippings and red berries tied together.
Here are a few helpful tips on making watercolor style art:

Mix shades of greens such as blue green and yellow green. Same goes with reds. The darker reds can add nice accents to the lighter red and orange colors.

Use thin and thick lines to create layers of details and contrasts. The dual brush markers are great for creating different textures and lovely details!

Here are our homemade baking soda and cornstarch air dry clay recipes , and DIY clay Christmas ornaments and lighted star garland tutorial if you need more info!

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If you try these DIY / decor / garden / craft projects, tag us on Instagram at @apieceofrainbow, we would love to see what you create!
Happy creating!
Oh my, you’ve opened up a whole new obsession!
super honored to hear that Cindy! 🙂 happy creating!
I was hoping to use natural holly or tree branches to make indents in the clay and they don’t seem to work very well on the glue/cornstarch recipe. Any helpful tips?
hi kelly, i found that if i keep the leaves on the “clay” prints as they dry for a day or two, it works better 🙂
These are so adorable!!!! Thank you for sharing xx
thank you Sharon! happy crafting! 🙂
Hello! Thanks for these cute ideas! I recently started making salt dough ornaments and I can’t figure out why my little figures curve as they dry. Have you ever had this happen? I’m definitely not making them too thick nor too thin. Do you typically flip them over as they dry?
hi karen, yes, flipping them every few hours especially during the first couple of days is really helpful to keep them flat! 🙂
Hi there! Beautiful ornaments! I love the idea of using berries and other types of nature. I was wondering though, so the berries dry out and change colour/shape? I once put a couple of berries similar to what you have shown on an ornament, and I covered it with MOD podge. It shriveled up. Was it the mod podge that did this, or was I supposed to let the berries dry out first before putting them on my ornament?
I would appreciate the advice and tips!
Hope you’re well!
hi Victoria! i think you have asked a great question and i may need to do some tests for! 🙂 the berries always shrivel, and i just use fresh ones each season. but maybe there’s a way to preserve berries and dye them a nice color, like how the preserve boxwood (which i tried and failed) ?
happy spring!! 🙂
Hi Amanda, I just stumbled onto your site and I love your DIY air dry clay Christmas ornaments . I was wondering if it’s possible to transfer photos or pictures on them to personalise them.
Thank you
hi dina, i love your idea! i think glue or modpodge will work nicely! let us know if you try it, and we will do the same! 🙂