Last week, when experimenting with Garden Stones for our Lorax Project, I played around with polymer clay and made some small garden stones. The girls loved painting them and surprising their dad with them as a sweet little gift for our herb garden. These would make a lovely Mother’s or Father’s Day gift for a gardening enthusiast. Ohh, I’m also thinking we could make Easter eggs to use year after year! These are really easy, let’s make some.
Get your hands on some polymer clay, Sculpey, or like me, the no-name-brand equivalent.
Work a ball of clay into a ball and then squash into rock shape.
Pull out some alphabet rubber stamps or whatever stamps you like.
Place your “rock” on a sturdy flat surface such as the curved arm of your chair (ha.)
Make a faint line to use as a guide for your lettering.
Press each letter straight down into the clay surface. Don’t look at my nails. I. SAID. DON’T.
Continue lettering. When finished, smooth any unwanted lines in the clay with a clean dry fingertip.
Pop those cuties on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Bake per packaging instructions, approximately 15 minutes per 1/4″. The clay will still feel slightly soft until it cools and hardens completely.
If you want to make your children as happy as mine looks below, you will want to let them paint the stones. HA, she is intense.
Once they are painted, clean the stamped area with a Q-tip to eliminate any pooling of paint.
Let them dry.
Then I coated my lil’ beauties with three coats of Minwax Polycrylic
Let them dry and pop them in the bed. You will never confuse your parsley and cilantro again!
6 comments
These are brilliant! My daughter is going to go batty when we try this out!
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I looked at your nails, I really couldn’t help it. But don’t feel bad- I had chipped orange paint on mine for a week recently. It just means you are a hardworking, play with the kids kind of mama, not a fussy spoiled one.
PS Totally making these for mother’s day. Lots of Great grandmas, grandmas and so on. Love ‘em. And it’s one of those gifts your kids can make for people that they will actually keep, use and love to show off. Not like those foam sticker crafts at the stores. (that your toddler eats when Grandma isn’t looking. Yeppers. That happened.)
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Jacinda Reply:
February 22nd, 2012 at 12:43 pm
HAHA! We should be ashamed. : )
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Jacinda Reply:
February 22nd, 2012 at 2:32 pm
Oh wait! your comment cut off at “orange paint.” I should have said “Yes, we should be proud of how hard-working we are!” ha!
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sarah Reply:
February 22nd, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Wow that’s smart! I gonna try this!
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