Surpassing half a billion downloads, Angry Birds has become the most downloaded game in the history of gaming. Though there are games with the same play concepts, it’s perhaps the only one that has expanded well beyond games for mobile phones, tablets, PC and web browsers. It’s taken the world by storm and its global appeal is certainly undeniable. In fact, earlier this month, Rovio opened its first Angry Birds-themed retail shop in its native Finland.

Seeing that there’s so much interest in this game, a good source for gifts this holiday season will probably be Rovio’s online shop. However, if you look around on the web, you’ll find plenty of tutorials teaching you how to create cool little toys and crafts. Here are 5 relatively easy projects that not only make homage to Angry Birds, but most importantly will probably make an Angry Birds-obsessed child, family member or friend ecstatic.

Snacks: Easy Cookies & Sandwiches

Sweetsugarbelle.com is a website dedicated to cookie decoration ideas, tutorials and recipes. On the site, the author modified a sugar cookie recipe for Angry Birds, using Easter cookie cutters bought from Target, and cutting the top part of the ears. From there, she used green, black, white flood icing to achieve this amazing rendition of the pig from Angry Birds. If you have a Hershey Kiss cutter, you can also make the Yellow Bird-shaped cookie with this recipe.

Another cool recipe that doesn’t involve much actual cooking is this amazing little open sandwich idea.

The recipe is here and requires mini-bagels, slices of salami, cheddar cheese, black olives, fresh mozzarella and shredded romaine lettuce. Though it only shows Red Bird, it’s still a fun, super-easy and quick way to make a sandwich. You could even have your kids help you making these goodies.

Christmas Ball Ornaments: Choose Between Painting Or Gluing

Here’s something that you can easily make for your Angry Birds-obsessed family members and/or friends for the upcoming holiday - a Christmas ball ornament. I’ve found two tutorials, one in text and another one in video form. For the first one, you’ll need plastic Christmas ornaments, some acrylic paint (the author of the tutorial even said some of the dollar store green and black paints will work fine), scraps of felt, a needle and white/red threads. The tutorial involves some painting and stitching but even if you’re that good at either of those skills, you can easily get away as they’ll look fabulous and fun either way.

For the second tutorial that doesn’t involve stitching or painting, you’ll need a glue gun, some red feathers, black pipecleaners, yellow foam or construction paper, black felt, googly (nope, they have nothing to do with Google) or wiggle eyes, and red Christmas balls. You can watch the complete Youtube tutorial from NICKandCHAPIN here:

Though the tutorial only shows how to complete an ornament for Red Bird, you can easily get creative to achieve the other characters in Angry Birds with some of the same materials.

Make Your Own Inexpensive (Polymer) Clay Figures

Polymer clay is a sculptable material used by artists, hobbyists and children that can be baked and hardened permanently. According to Wikipedia, it’s based on PVC and is only called “clay” because it resembles clay in texture and working properties. This type of “clay” seems to be very popular on YouTube as it’s flooded with polymer clay tutorials. Most of them show you how to make miniature Angry Birds for key chains, charms bracelets and so forth. The following tutorial by EvanTubeHD (narrated by the channel owner’s son) is one that shows how to make a bigger model of Orange Bird from Angry Birds 2012 – Hamoween:

The 3-minute video-tutorial features Sculpey III clay, which can be found on Amazon for less than $3 for 2oz or at your local Hobby Lobby, Michael’s or craft supply store. In the video, the artist wraps a ball of scrunched-up aluminum foil with orange polymer clay, and makes the eyes, teeth, beak and feathers from smaller pieces of black, yellow and white clay. After that, he wraps toothpicks with brown clay to make the eyebrows before putting the model on a foil-lined pan and into a regular oven for 20 minutes at 275 degrees F.

The tutorial seems easy enough that it makes you want to buy some polymer clay, doesn’t it?! After all, If you get all the characters in Angry Birds, you could end up having your own little Angry Birds game, like this boy from the same channel, EvanTubeHD.

Of course, if you’d rather buy unique clay models, there are plenty of expert polymer clay artists that sell their creations on Etsy, like this ornament:

Or these earrings:

Bonus (For Those That Can Stitch Or Crochet)

If you can stitch, there’s a tutorial from Obsessively Stitching that can show you how to make your own Angry Birds plush toys.

The tutorials from the same blog to make all the Angry Birds characters are here.

Now if you can crochet, there’s a popular pattern from theitsybitsyspider (and another one here) you can follow to get Angry Birds models like these:

This is a small selection of DIY projects that Angry Birds fans have come up. Have you seen other cool Angry Birds-inspired crafts or recipes out there? Tell us in the comments below!

Image credit: Screencap from EvanTubeHD's video