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!

Beautiful DIY air dry clay and salt dough Christmas ornaments using nature finds & watercolor art on homemade clay! Easy and unique holiday crafts, gifts & decorations!

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

watercolor art DIY air dry clay and salt dough Christmas ornaments on homemade clay! Easy and unique holiday crafts, gifts & decorations!

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.

How to make salt dough or air dry clay ornaments & lighted star Christmas garland using cookie cutters & DIY templates, & helpful tips to prevent cracks.

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

hand painted DIY air dry clay and salt dough Christmas ornaments  crafts, gifts & decorations!

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! 🙂

baking soda clay ornaments

Materials and tools to decorate air dry clay and salt dough Christmas ornaments

painting air dry clay and salt doung ornamnets

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.

making cornstarch air dry clay Christmas crafts

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.

Christmas tree ornaments painted on homemade clay

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

air dry clay and salt dough crafts and ornaments

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:

beautiful Christmas decorations gifts and crafts using air dry clay

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.

homemade clay and salt dough to make Christmas decorations and crafts

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!

cutting air dry clay and salt dough to make Christmas decorations and crafts

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!

rolling clay and slat dough to make Christmas decorations and crafts

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!

12 Comments

  1. 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?

  2. 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 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!! 🙂

  3. 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

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