Annual Holiday Crafting Session Begins..... or..... A Great Fimo Ornament Tutorial

Every year about this time, for the past eighteen years or so......

Oh..... has it been that many years? Oh my!

My girlfriend and I get together for a crafting day to finish up family gift making and get together for a good old chat. We had our Craft Session today and it was wonderful!

I finished up some presents that I will show a little later and Lynne made these gorgeous tree ornaments by embellishing clear glass balls with STAEDTLER Fimo.

Here are the things you will need to make six ornaments:

STAEDTLER Fimo soft in the following colours
white # -0
cherry red # - 26
emerald # - 56
lemon yellow # - 10
Fimo varnish in gloss
Fimo push molds Christmas design # -8725 06
6 clear glass ornaments
glitter in yellow, red and green
basic sculpting tools
Green mineral pigments or eye-shadow.
Soft paintbrush
Sanding block medium grit or spongy nail file

We started by cutting out some basic plaque shapes. You can make your own or print some templates from the Internets. We made them about 1/4 cm thick and made them fit on the balls we had. We rolled out worms of red green and white clay and twisted them together to make a candy cane worm to trim our plaques edges. We also used the Fimo Christmas push mould to create pine boughs and stars to decorate the ornaments.

After we had the plaques all cut and wrapped in candy cane worms, Lynne pressed a plaque onto each ornament's front. She pressed firmly but made sure not to leave dents and fingermarks.

Then it was time to decorate each ornament with the Fimo push mould bits. Lynne chose stars for one set and pine boughs for the other but there are many designs to choose from this one push mould set. She also added some little balls of red clay to the pine boughs and poked them in the middle with a pointy tool to set them into the clay pine boughs.

Lynne used a stylus tool to write messages onto the white plaque part of each ornament. Some have the year on them and others have names. If you aren't comfortable free handing this you could print some words out and trace them on first.

Next we rubbed some green mineral pigments onto the unbaked clay plaque part of each ornament. We made sure only to get the pigment powder onto the white part and really got it into the grooves of each letter.

We baked the ornaments with the plaques right on there. We put them on the wire wrack in the oven so they wouldn't roll around. We baked them for 15 minutes at 230 degrees and allowed them to cool off before the next step.



We used a sponge file to sand off the top layer of clay from each plaque and remove the pigment powder. It allows the pigment powder to stay in the groves made with the stylus tool. Dust the piece off well.

A nice even coat of Fimo gloss varnish on the plaque part of each ornament will make sure the pigment is permanent. Let it dry before moving on to the next step. Should only take as long as it takes you to drink a cup of coffee.

Next we added some Fimo gloss varnish to the berries and then sprinkled them with red sparkles. Let them dry and repeat with the green sparkles on the pine boughs and add some yellow sparkles to the stars on the other set of ornaments.

We let them dry in their plastic bulb holder.

But some juice glasses worked too.

We even hung a couple on the tree to see how they looked there. I think today was a pretty big success. I really love these ornaments! They were super fast and simple to create. Plus I got to spend a day with one of the sweetest people I know!

I love you my Lynnie!
Merry Christmas folks. I hope you get to spend time with some sweet people too.