One of my favorite things about the festive season is trimming the tree.  I love going through all of the ornaments and decorations, especially the homemade homes and hanging them as I reminisce about when we made them.  This adorable white clay christmas fingerprint ornament is a take on our valentine fingerprint heart ornaments.

There is something really special about keepsake ornaments and these white clay Christmas fingerprint ornament are no exception.  We like to tape them in Christmas cards for the grandparents.

How to make white clay Christmas fingerprint ornament

Materials:

• Baking soda clay (we use this recipe, but store-bought air-drying clay or homemade salt dough will work too). We mixed things up and tried Fimo Air Light (US Link/UK Link) and LOVED it – you can microwave it!
• rolling pin
• bauble shaped cookie cutters (UK Link/US Link)
• straw
• ribbon or twine
• ink pads or paint
• Sharpie

Instructions:

Once you have decided which clay to use, roll it out (we use a silicone cooking mat) to around 3/4 cm thick.

Cut out your bauble shapes using a cookie cutter

Make a hole at the top using a straw which will become the hole for your thread or ribbon.

Get your child to press their finger into the clay at an angle and repeat in the opposite direction so that the bottoms of the prints meet and form a ‘v’ shape heart. Make sure that they press firmly so their finger makes a distinct impression in the dough.

Allow your dough to harden, how long this takes will depend on which dough you use. Not this is where Fimo Air Light (US Link/UK Link) comes into its own.  It took 10 minutes to dry in the microwave.  It is AMAZING!

Once your ornaments are hard comes the fun part of decorating them. We decided to use ink pads as we wanted to get the boys fingerprint details to show on the hearts. However you could use paint, ink or even glitter.

When using an ink pad, you just press the same finger as you made the indentation with on to the ink pad and then in to the indentation.

One the ink is dry, you can varnish the hearts or you can leave them as they are, which is what we did. Oh and dont forget to pop the childs name and date on the rear!

We also added wire to hang our white clay Christmas fingerprint ornament on to the tree.

Talking about the tree, just take a look at this years Christmas Tree, it makes me giddy, I love it so much.  It was gifted to us by Balsam Hill and it is a seven and a half foot cathedral fir.  Oh how I love it.  It is pre lit and just wonderful.

It is PERFECT for our compact living room.  The fact that it is tall and narrow means that I can see past it, but it also means that it takes lots of decorations.   You know you are getting a quality tree when it comes with two pairs of gloves for the sprucing up!

The tree comes in three sections and a bag for storage.  It is simple to errect and the lights are placed perfectly too.  In tried to get an arty shot, but I think I need lessons!

I am not going to pretend that this isnt an investment tree, it is, but our last tree lasted us ten years and I can see us getting even longer out of this one.   It is beautifully proportioned for a tall thin tree.  It is full and bushy and you can not see the central pole, enthought the branches are shorter.   It takes heavy ornaments without the branches bending too much and comes with a fab bag for packing, in addition to a small zip bag with spare bulbs and the aforementioned gloves.

Disclosure, we were gifted a tree by Balsam Hill