Kids Clay Gift Idea

 This week was a busy week in my household as we get ready for Father's Day. This is also the first year where my son took a big role in creating his own gifts for dad. Now of course I was there to assist him along with a little help from my brother when he was around. This is just one of a few different projects that we had done during the week.

Other than a few small clay ornaments we made back in February for Valentines Day I had not worked with clay much. I am a big fan of the Crayola Air-Dry-Clay and I will most definitely be going back and buying more. This last week was National Clay Week so I only thought it was fitting to use clay as one of our gift projects.

So to start off my son and I made a big clay ball and then rolled it out into a 3/4 inch pancake. I made sure everything was smoothed out. Yes we had to improvise a bit for a rolling pin and used a smooth pencil to roll  it out. We are not much for baking and recently realized that I don't own a rolling pin. Mind you this is now on my list of things to pick up next time I am at the store.

So after our clay chunk is rolled out nice and smooth I took my sons freshly washed foot and placed it in the center of the the clay piece. I had him shift all his weight onto his one foot and I helped him press down so that we could get an imprint of his foot into the clay.

After we pressed his foot we did the same thing for his hand. Then we poked holes in the top so that we could hang these on the wall. I also stuck in the wooden pegs that I will be using for the key chain holder. After I imprinted the pegs I pulled them out and cut out the shape I wanted and set the clay pieces aside to dry for the next couple days.

After the pieces were all dry we pulled them out and Jesse picked out what colors he wanted to paint them. We went ahead and put the first coat of paint on them and applied a 2nd coat after the first coat had dried.

I wanted the imprints to stand out a bit so I decided to attempt my first "antiquing technique" to the imprint with some black paint and a dry cloth. I dabbed a small amount of paint and gently wiped it throughout the imprint. I then went back with the colored paint to touch up any spots that I had accidentally smudged over. I didn't like the look of the yellow and black so i went back and put a metallic silver on the imprint for the foot.

When all the paint was dried I took them outside and sprayed them with a high gloss enamel to give it a protective coat.

This was definitely a fun project to do with my little guy and I know he had a blast with it. I can't wait to do our next clay project.

We always love to hear from our readers so let us know what you made for Fathers Day or what you made with your latest clay project.








Happy Crafting

Stephanie