Project Ellia’s Room – Mini Clay Cactus

Since moving into our new house in December it has been a crazy month! Ellia’s room was one of the first I was hoping to finish. I decided that I wanted to go with a whole new design than her past rooms. I really wanted a feature wall and had the hardest time figuring out what to do. That’s for another post though 😉 The theme of her room is sort of a Whimsical California Desert, centered around the feature wall and duvet I ordered for her bed.

This year I’ve also
decided to start using some new mediums and trying some new things I
haven’t used in awhile, like wood, clay, paper mache and sewing.

I vividly remember when I was a kid and my mom used to take me to
drama class and there was this boy who made Star Wars polymer
clay figures and I thought they were so cool. I remember thinking I had
to get some of this clay and make my own figures, although they never
turned out quite so awesome as his.

Here is a little tutorial on how to make the polymer clay cactuses

Materials:

Polymer oven bake clay – I used gold (for base), two shade of green, and pink

mini wooden pots (Michael’s)

toothpicks

X-Acto knife 

parchment paper

rolling pin

Make sure to put down some parchment or wax paper underneath your work space so it doesn’t stick or leave a mark on your workspace.

 Roll out a ball from the gold.

 Flatten the ball using rolling pin or bottom of a flat glass. Make sure it fits into the pot.

Roll out three balls from a green colour.

 Shape it to make it go in slightly at the bottom and roll out or flatten with glass.

 Shape and stack them on top of each other to make a pretty cactus shape.

 Use a toothpick and poke little holes all around the front, back and sides.

 Roll out 5 mini balls from the pink for the flowers.

 Place the balls on the cactus like little flowers. Use your X-Acto knife and make a small cut in the middle of the pink ball and move from side to side to open a bit.

 Bake per instructions on the package and let cool. Place in the mini wooden pots and voila!

 I decided to make a few different shapes. I also mixed the colours together to get differenet shades and used paint for some detail on the middle design.

 I also made a mini one for her triangle shelf, I made the pot out of light pink clay and painted it once baked.

 There are so many fun options with this clay, I made these little donuts too, aren’t they so sweet!?  Can’t wait to make some more goodies!

xox Nat