best air dry clay for clay Christmas tree ornaments?

I haven't done it, but my mom used to make a salt dough with flour water and salt.

I think Crayola's Model Magic would be perfect. It's mold able for the acorns, you can roll it out for the stamped cookie cutter cookies, you can paint it...

I used to buy it in a big tub with a coupon from Michael's. I still have creations from DD that are 10 plus years old. Double bag it in a zip bag if you don't use it all,

Sorry!

This seems like the reviews you might be looking for www.ghoulfriday.com/clay
short but informative. Let us know how it works out. I also have been interested in dabbling with air dried clay.

I used air dry clay for some ornaments and they have held up about 2 years now.

I have used both Creative Paperclay and Delight and they were easy to work with.

I used Crayola too.

I just had a huge long post describing the properties of multiple clays that you can make at home and their individual recipes. I went to grab the URL for the paper mache lady and the huge post was eaten. Damn. I don't feel like typing all that again so this is the highlights.

Basically, there are three clays that I would recommend for this. Either porcelain clay or paper mache clay, or a combo of the two. I had recipes written for each type of clay, because I'm too cheap to by ready-made clay when you can make it yourself for pennies on the dollar. I don't buy polymer clay anymore, I use the porcelain clay instead. It works very well in molds and with little tools for carving and shaping. And if not for this effort, maybe look it up for future projects for your oldest daughter. I really prefer it to polymer clays for the price! Most of what I've been using it for is push molds. It holds the shape perfectly and it air dries.

I'm including the website for the best paper mache recipe. This site also gives you the combo recipe. I haven't used the combo clay yet myself, but watch the video and see what you think. It looks very promising to me.

The woman who is amazing with paper mache has come up with the combo recipe for something she is making that required more details than the paper mache would give you. She has a video showing how she made her first combo clay. Then she asked viewers for input. She added a second video showing the changes she made based on the input she received. The second type uses a homemade glue that I've never tried, so I'm not sure about that. I have a lot of Elmer's glue already, so I personally would just use the Elmers. The combo clay can be sanded to be super smooth, if that is important to the girls, but it also keeps the tiny designs you press into it very well. It seems like a great clay for the project your kids are doing.

Material sources: The clay lady uses toilet paper as her paper source so it is very inexpensive if you go buy some cheap toilet paper. I don't use the stuff from my bathrooms because it costs more and why waste it? I buy my PVA glue at the hardware store by the gallon, Elmer's, because is it much cheaper than using little school-sized bottles. Both the hardware store and Walmart should carry both large containers of glue and the joint compound that you would need. You can make a couple of batches of clay for the girls really inexpensively with these recipes.

If you are interested in making the porcelain clay, there are multiple recipes and videos on line. If you want to use Jonni's combo recipe, she has that on her site here:

www.ultimatepapermache.com

If time permits, you might want to make a batch of the new combo and the porcelain clay and let the kids decide which works best. The glue is used in both recipes. The porcelain clay uses cornstarch and the clay uses toilet paper as main ingredients. Have fun and let me know if you have questions. I'll try to answer or point you to a site that can.

One other suggestion (if you can find it) is LaDoll air drying clay. My DD and her DH used it to embellish wooden wands for a Harry Potter party, and they looked amazing! The wands were sanded slightly and painted, but you would swear they were of elegantly carved wood instead of shaped wooden dowels and air dry clay.

It's a little expensive, but I have bought it at a big box craft store with a coupon. I found it either at Michaels or AC Moore. JoAnn's didn't carry it.

ETA:  I haven't actually used it yet, although I bought some for a project that I hope to make at some point.