Clay Cut-Outs

When Design Originals asked me to do a book on Christmas ornaments, they wanted cute designs that would be quick and easy to make. I had some Kemper cutters on hand, and I started playing around with shapes and came up with some simple, but very cute designs using the teardrop, heart, and round cutters in various sizes.

The teddy bear, angel, and Santa Claus have pants made using a teardrop cutter. I used a small heart-shaped cutter to create the angel's and Santa's shoes. I turned the heart cut-out sideways, stretched the top up slightly and then cut it straight across, then attached to the bottom of the teardrop shapes. I did the same thing to create the teddy bear's stocking, just using a larger heart cutter. Santa's jacket was made using a larger heart cutter turned upside down. I rolled out a very thin piece of red clay with a pasta machine and then cut out rectangles that I gathered for the angel and teddy bear's tops.







The gingerbread men that Santa and the teddy bear are holding were made using a small flower shaped cutter.

It's a lot of fun to experiment with these small cutters and see what you come up with.

COOKIE CUTTER ORNAMENTS

Since people are always looking for quick and easy ornaments to make, editors are always looking for quick and easy ornament projects. I came up with an idea to use a 2" gingerbread man cookie cutter I had to make a variety of Christmas characters that I could put onto glass ball ornaments. This was a project I did for the January 2001 issue of "Great American Crafts" magazine:



The snowman was made using the 2" cookie cutter, the gingerbread boy and girl were made using a 1" gingerbread man cutter.

The Santa Claus below uses the same 2" gingerbread man cut-out as a base, only this time, I cut the piece out of red clay, and then added the other elements to turn it into a Santa.



I attached the unbaked pieces to the glass balls using super glue and then baked them. They've held up for 9 years with no problems, but if you don't want to put super glue in the oven, you could always attach the unbaked clay pieces to the glass ball, bake them, then gently pop them off, and reattach them with glue. I've never had any problems with baking super glue. It is flammable, but not at the low temps polymer clay bakes at. I was not the first person who tried this! LOL I took my cue from many other clay artists who have baked super glue with polymer clay.

This makes a cute and very simple project that could easily be personalized.