Double Duty – Gift Tags Become Custom Ornaments

This post was originally published on DIY Network’s blog Made + Remade in December 2014.

It’s the time of the year filled with holiday parties, Secret Santas, and gift exchanges. Spruce up that special present – whether it be personal for a spouse, professional for a boss, or maybe just a bag of holiday-theme Hershey’s Kisses for the neighbor – add a custom name tag that the recipient will be able to reuse year-after-year as a personalized ornament.

The gift tags I made were little snowmen (I made 5 gift tags using 1 package of white clay, 1 package of black, and 1 package of orange).

If you’re looking for printable tags, there are a bunch of free ideas available:

For more clay ornaments, be sure to look at these ideas:

Thumbprint ornaments (tradition for the kids!)
Salt dough ornaments (could also use clay for this project)

Step 1

Start by softening white oven-bake clay in your hands, and then rolling it flat to 1/8″ thickness.

Step 2

Cut three circles from the clay in varied sizes. I used a knife to freehand my circles, but use coins as a template if you need a guide.

Step 3

Compress your body layers together gently by hand to fuse the clay together again.

Step 4

Add black eyes, arms, and a carrot nose using other colors of oven-bake clay.

Just a tip, use a sharp pencil tip to indent where the the different color clay pieces will go. When you place these pieces onto the snowman body, press them a little bit to initiate a bond between the colors. If they are tacky and stick in place, they will bake together.

Step 5

On the base of your snowman, use alphabet stamps to engrave the name of the recipient. On the top hat, poke a small hole so that you can tie the tag to the gift, and so it can be reused as an ornament.

Step 6

Bake according to your product instructions – the clay I used (with the thickest parts measuring 1/4″) required 20-minutes of bake time at 275-degrees.

Step 7

Once cooled, thread the ribbon rough the top of the ornament and attach it to your gift package! Your recipient will be able to reuse it as an ornament on his or her Christmas tree.