Last year, I started playing around with air dry clay and making things with it for fun. No stress. Just a way to use my hands and play with clay.

Recently, this year, I made a few items and thought I’d share how it all went. First, I purchased packaged clay on Amazon. (BTW, I get no kickbacks from sharing thoughts on Amazon products, it is just FYI).

It was air dry clay for kids with six molding designs. This basically means a set of different colored clay portions came in six separate envelopes. They were nicely packaged. It had a little card to help you figure out how to design what is shown on the front. Here’s a photo of one to make a little wreath.

I liked the envelopes because if you have any clay left over, you store it in the package/envelope.

The instructions included in the packages were pretty basic. It was just a little card to show steps, but it was easy to understand. It had all the right holiday colors like red, green, white, etc. to make the item depicted on the front of the package.

What I have discovered with air dry clay is that it can flop. It is a little frustrating. I’ll make an item, like a snow man. As it dries, it starts to lean or flop.

In fact, my snowman started to turn into a melting snow man. Not literally melting, but you see below in the first photo how it is all the way over, like Mr. Snowman had a bender the night before.

The snowmen I ended up making were all different. I didn’t follow the package’s formula or design for the snowmen. I was just playing around with it. Adding little embellishments is easy as well, just stick into the clay like the mini trees and berries.

Here’s a tree I made where I did follow the design packet’s instructions. But again, it started to lean as it dried. The clay is soft and when it dries completely, it feels like a hard marshmallow texture.

The clay was leaning all the time. I thought, “Well, let me try to make some flat items instead of three dimensional.”

I really like how the flat creations came out. They look like Christmas cookies or even fondant cookies that would go on a cake. In fact, if a little kid was around, I would need to be careful. They would think it was a real cookie and take a bite!

This is when the fun started to kick in for me. I want to make more and will do so. I’m just trying to think of how to use them. I really don’t want to make ornaments, too traditional. Maybe they would look cute attached to something. Maybe I should make a fake cupcake and put it on the top – like a dessert! Or a fake cake?

Anyhow, that is about it for this post. These types of simple crafts would be fun to do with kids. The instructions are basic. The cleanup is easy.

Tips on the clay – once something is attached, it is not easily removed off. If you wet the clay and rub it, it will smear the color. You don’t want to do that. Any unused clay also needs to stay in an enclosed package to not dry out. It is best to use the clay relatively quickly because eventually it will dry out.

Thank you for visiting,

Cathy Testa

Date of this Post: 12/12/2025