Crafting: Ceramic Christmas Figure – Santa Claus

Time Required: 1h – 1h30
Difficulty: Easy
Review of kit: 3 out of 5 stars – downside is that only some colours are included, not all

I found some fun crafts for this Christmas season, including a ceramic figure of Santa Claus. I bought this figure in the Action store in Belgium, where it cost about 1.50 EUR, so it was quite cheap and it did provide me with an hour of fun.

The box contained three items: the ceramic figure, paint in six colours (primary colours plus black and white) and a small paint brush. The paint brush was actually the ideal size for painting the figure, and was easy to paint with without leaving any stains.

I started by painting Santa’s clothes in red. You can see a close-up of the figure above. It was quite detailed (with eyes, moustache, bushy eyebrows). My loyal feline helper, Teigetje, helped me paint.

A close-up of the figure with two colours painted: red and black. I decided to start with the colours provided by the painting set, and any colours that required mixing, I would do at the end. I gave two layers for each colour.

After finishing with the base colours, I had to mix a few of the colours up to get the shades I wanted. Unfortunately, that wasn’t such a success as it was difficult to get the right shade.

I wanted to mix pink for Santa’s face, and while the colour looked okay-ish when I had mixed it, the moment I applied it, I thought it looked too pink. Same with Santa’s beard: I wanted to go for a light grey (since I didn’t want too much white considering Santa’s outfit already has a lot of white) but I ended up with dark rather than light grey.

Above is the final result. As I mentioned, I’m not that pleased with the pink or grey, but it was fun to paint this figure. I spent about 1h- 1h30 painting Santa. I would say it’s also a fun item to craft with kids since they can get creative on Santa’s outfit. However, one downside is that you have to mix certain colours to end up with the right shades, and it’s difficult to get the correct colour.

Next week, I’ll work on a Christmas-themed clay figure.