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This last Christmas was the year for clay pot Christmas crafts. It all started when I saw a screenshot on Facebook of a clay pot Christmas tree ornament as a kids craft. I thought that would be fun and easy to do with the boys, so I got to work.
My mother-in-law kindly picked me up a couple of different sized clay pots while out and about. I had planned to pick them up one day, but the store I went to didn’t have any. I then decided that I needed pots with holes in the bottom so I purchased some more on Amazon. Of course I did. I ended up with a lot of assorted pots. So what was going to be a simple Christmas tree ornament for each grandparent, turned into two ornaments for each set of grandparents, a set for Aunt and Uncle, and a set of Christmas trees and toy soldiers for my MIL.
First of all, I feel the need to explain the toy soldier a bit more. Back when we lived in Texas (my in-laws lived there as well), my MIL fell in love with a neighbor’s toy soldiers on his porch. She actually rang the doorbell one day to get details. He had found them at some random market or something if I remember correctly. We decided, “We could make that!” and set out to make a three piece set of different sizes. Two large and one medium, for my SIL, I believe. My SIL and I glued the pots together with super strong glue. The two big ones were about 4 foot tall, if memory serves me right. We got them glued, and then life got in the way, Christmas came and went, and the soldiers were put on the back burner.
We moved to Kansas, then about a year later my MIL moved to Kansas as well. She still has the glued pots sitting in her shed with all of her Christmas decor. Reminding me of my daughter-in-law shortcomings.
When I suddenly had a million clay pots in front of me, I decided I should try out making a toy soldier. Kind of like a test run before committing to one almost as tall as me. I’m super glad that I did.
With these little ones I only hot-glued the pots together. Here’s to hoping they didn’t need something more heavy duty! Since they had holes in them I strung a bell on some twine and also threaded it through the soldier for some extra support and Christmas cheer. Because of course I did.
While at it, I glued some different sized pots on top of one another to make a set of three Christmas trees. I had seen similar ideas on Pinterest while searching for the original Christmas tree ornament idea, and then my MIL sent me a link to a similar project later in the day. This was clearly a sign that I had to make her a set. I like excuses to be crafty.
The boys were going to make Christmas “trees” and “bells” for their clay pot crafts. I painted the trees all with a base layer of green and then bells with a base layer of white. Then I started on the base colors for the solder. I just looked up images of clay pot toy soldiers on Pinterest and roughly recreated the look.
The boys got to use q-tips, paintbrushes, and their hands to paint on their ornaments. They were super interested at first, then less so. Eventually I started playing with painting the ornaments, having given up on giving them to anyone, and then SUDDENLY they were both interested in painting again. Story of my life! Wyatt swiped paint randomly and Liam decided to get messy and smear paint EVERYWHERE on the ornaments with his fingers while I spin them around. It worked.
For the trees I simply dabbed color randomly everywhere. I wasn’t thrilled with them, but Liam later slashed some paint on them too, which made me feel they were more authentic and grandma worthy.
Then I hot-glued some star shaped buttons to the top of each clay pot tree. This of course turned into an issue when Liam was suddenly reminded of these color and shape assorted buttons that had been out of sight for some time. He was suddenly very much in love with them and did not like that I “took” his stars. We had words. We moved on eventually. He may have brought it up when grandma opened her gift. Kids.
The toy soldiers were a bit rough. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist, but I also kind of just wing things. It’s a weird combo. I wasn’t thrilled with my details, so I outlined them with sharpie. It definitely made it BETTER, but not 100% what I wanted. I gave up on trying and just let it be. The larger one came out better than the smaller one. That makes sense since I make the small one first. I had learned.
I glued small gold stars onto the top of the clay pot Christmas tree ornaments, tied a bell inside the small bell ornaments, and glued a small white pom-pom to the hats of the soldiers. All items from Dollar Tree.
Finally, I sprayed them all with a glass top coat that I had laying around. I may have done that in the kitchen without thinking about how many crafts we had done. Thankfully it wasn’t TOO cold out, so that I could open the windows and turn on the fans to air things out. It was very fume filled.
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