I recently posted about some of my favourite craft projects on Pinterest. I knew I wanted to give at least one or two of the projects a go before bub is born. Plus I have a bit of time on my hands lately to try and occupy myself.
The first project I wanted to try was making clay gift tags. The pinterest tutorial was to make them out of a salt dough, which is kinda like play dough. However I didn't have the patience to make them from scratch so I went the easy option and bought some air drying white clay from my local art shop. It cost me $9.95 for 1.6kg of the stuff and I only used a small portion of it for the amount of tags I made.
To make clay tags you will need a few things, which can generally be found around the house or in your kitchen drawer.
Air Drying White Clay
Rolling Pin
Cookie Cutters - of varying sizes and shapes
Knife
Skewer
Baking Paper
Cookie Tray
Stamp Letters * I bought my mini letters from ebay second hand for about $8
Paint/Stamp Pads
Doilies/Fabric to make texture
1. Lay out some baking paper on a hard surface. This will be your working surface to roll out your clay on. I found that if I rolled the clay straight onto the bench it was difficult to pick up the cut out shapes off the bench without ruining them
2. Roll out the clay to about 1/2 cm thick. The tags need to be about this thick because if they're any thinner they will break very easily - as I found out on my first go.
3. If you want to add some texture to your clay tags roll a doilies or some textured fabric such as linen over a section of the clay to create a texture indent. This is where you can really have fun creating different textured tags.
3. Select the cookie cutter size or shape that you want to use for the clay tags. I generally used a round 2 1/4 inch round cookie cutter for the round tags that I created. They were a good size to be able to stamp words on. Position the cookie cutter over half of the textured space and half on smooth space. Cut out.
4. Remove out of the clay and set aside. Using your skewer make a small hole at the top of your tag, which will allow you to hang it up later.
6. Select the words that you want to stamp onto the tag. I chose to do a selection of words to hang on a silver tree that I had sitting around needing a bit of decoration. Words such as Love, Sweet, Home, Family etc.
7. Using a stamp pad or watered down paint - stamp the letters into your selected colour and stamp onto the clay tag! * I forgot to do this step in my rush of impatience and realised it is difficult to see the words that are stamped into the tag. So in future clay projects I will do this.
8. Set the finished tag onto a lined cookie tray to dry for about 48 hours in a warm, dry spot. I left mine next to our fireplace, which helped them dry out nicely.
As you can see with the projects I did below the possibilities are endless of what lovely things you can create with clay tags. These tags make great gifts and each set you make is unique. I want to make some christmas ornamets for the christmas tree. I think they'll look pretty good hanging on jute string with twinkling fairy lights in the background.
Why not make a cute clay love heart garland using heart shape cookie cutters! Hang with jute string and your in business.
Cute herb tags make great gifts. I made a series of them including mint, oregano and basil. Use a scalloped cookie cutter to create a nice edge to the tags and finishe off with jute kitchen twine for a rustic finish. Wrap the tags around old glass bottles and proudly display your fresh kitchen herbs on your window sill.
Create these cute decorative tags to hang from a spray painted branch (or plastic tree in this case). A great way to add some interest to a potential boring item.
I hope this tutorial inspires you to go out and create some of your own. Let me know if it does and what you want to create! I love to hear from my readers! :-)
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