I try to make a new family ornament every year. This year I thought a gingerbread family would be cute…but I got even more excited when I thought of putting them on a baking sheet!

I found some sparkly silver clay and rolled it flat. To get the perfect baking sheet shape, I found a box and squished it into the clay. Then I took my x-acto knife (X-ACTO 1 Knife, Z Series With Safety Cap) and cut off the excess, making a nice little ledge.

After I had my baking sheet, I mixed together some gingerbread color clay. I had a small cookie cutter that was in a gingerbread shape…but I lost it. So, I cut it out by hand. With a sharp little knife it is easy to cut and adjust the clay. Just for fun I added a little balloon to the smallest shape at the end. I thought it was cute. I made each gingerbread person (girls, in my case) a little smaller than the one before, just to represent myself and each kid. Then I placed them on my “baking sheet” clay piece one by one. For smaller families, I added a Christmas tree at the end to fill up the space.

Next came the little buttons and bows for the girls. Since they were tiny, I didn’t do much to make the bows. I just cut out the shape and used the tip of the knife to make little lines for more detail. I rolled tiny little pieces of clay to make the buttons. I also added a same color strip at the bottom to later write something on it.

I added little hooks to the ornaments and baked them. I did make all of the little white details with clay at first, but that was too time consuming (since I was making multiple ornaments). A paintbrush with a tiny little tip worked just as well. After they were baked, I drew on the white lines and they eyes. I also wrote our family name on the bottom, and the year. The white is supposed to look kind of like “icing”.

There are many different possibilities for smaller families. I added Christmas trees for the ones with less gingerbread people, even one with a dog. After sealing them all (I use Polyform Sculpey Glaze, 1-Ounce, Satin), this was the end result.  I loved how they all turned out.