It's beginning to look a lot like a homemade Christmas!

I'm not buying any extra Christmas decorations this year.  We bought a new one on holidays, and we were given two by my mum from her recent overseas trip.  So what to do?  Well, we've got a very large shell collection.  When it's not quite beach weather we can still be found, trawling the shores at Kurnell or Cronulla for shells.  When I say very large shell collection, I'm talking a 5 litre tub.  Miss 4 doesn't like to part with things like shells and doesn't like to play with them either...so there they are, taking up a 5 litre tub that could be used for so many different things.

I have however convinced her to part with some to make some "beachy" Christmas decorations.  We used the clay recipe you can find here.  We found it a bit tricky to roll out, so added some cornflour to our rolling pins.  We rolled them out to about .5cm thick and cut circles with the top of a glass.  We then stuck our shells all over them, making sure they didn't overlap the edges.  We put a hole in them with a toothpick and transfered them to the oven for 1hr 15 mins at 160 degrees.

I probably overcooked them, but it makes the clay look more sand-like.  We'll decide later whether we will pain them gold or leave them and just seal them.

Here they are before baking: