DIY: Air-Dry Clay

Since we have enjoyed making oven bake clay, it made sense that we would like this recipe, too. When I saw it on Pinterest labeled as a "Model Magic" type clay I was intrigued. I have always wanted us to try out the Model Magic, but I had never wanted to pay for it. So, as you can imagine, I was pretty happy to find out how easily it can be made at home. Plus, I am always looking for more fun things to do with food coloring. You can also paint this clay after it hardens, I am told, but I have not tried that since I wanted to experiment with the food coloring.

We made this batch of air-dry clay back at the end of March, so it easily will last you 2 weeks if kept in an airtight container. I made some final beads with the last of this clay 3 weeks after mixing it up, and decided to bake it, which had mixed results. The pink came out very well after I sprinkled a small amount of corn starch onto a cereal box liner and started rolling it out. The purple, however, was very moist, and several additions of corn starch did not seem to remedy this. Undeterred, I made beads with both colors because I truly wanted to know how long this stuff would keep.

I also decided to try baking the beads since I realized the recipe was very similar to this one for Bright White Clay Dough (same ingredients, different proportions), which I had also seen on Pinterest. So, I baked my last few beads on a parchment-lined cookie sheet at 175 degrees for 2 hours, flipping half-way through the baking time. Then, I let them cool in the oven. The pink beads turned out great, and as expected, the purple beads did not. Although they firmed up and were functional, the color had turned a putrid shade of brown, so in the end, I tossed them out.

So, my final conclusions are that a) This recipe definitely works for making an air-dry clay cheaply and easily at home! b) You can also bake this clay, if you prefer not to give up counter space for a couple of days while it hardens. c) Food coloring will work for this clay. Colors fade after they dry/are baked, but that is to be expected. d) Clay will keep for 2-3 weeks in an air-tight container.

{Mia's sculptures + some purple beads, BEFORE drying}

Materials:

• 2 cups baking soda
• 1 cup corn starch
• 1 1/2 cups cold water
• food coloring (optional)
• large pot
• spoon
• bowls (1 per color, if making more than one color)
• damp dish towel (1 per bowl) 
• optional clay tools: rolling pin, cookie cutters, straws, knife, rubber stamps
• container to keep clay (if not planning to use it all right away)

Directions for Making Air-Dry Clay:

1. Combine baking soda, corn starch, and water in a large pot. If desired, add food coloring. (Note: I actually divided this into 2 half batches in 2 different pots and added neon pink food coloring to one and neon purple food coloring to the other, 5 drops per batch.)
2. Cook on medium heat, stirring almost constantly until the mixture forms a mashed potatoes-like consistency.
3. Place clay into a bowl (I used 2 since I had 2 colors) and cover with a damp dish towel. Allow clay to cool.
4. Knead the clay until it is smooth. If damp, add a little corn starch. Tip: We did this on top of a cereal box liner (free "wax paper") and it worked very well to keep the counter clean. Plus, the clay didn't stick to the surface.
5. Make things with the clay. You can make free-form sculptures like Mia did. (Note: Parts of her sculptures did start to fall off and I don't know if that is because of the material or because of how she made things.) I chose to make beads. Another option that we didn't try this time around is making ornaments/tags by cutting with cookie cutters, using rubber stamps for designs, and punching a hole for hanging using a straw. How To Make Beads: 1) Roll clay into coils. 2) Slice segments with a knife. 3) Use a straw to punch a hole all the way through the clay.
6. Set aside to dry in a safe location. I found that this takes about 48 hours. 
7. Store extra clay in an air-tight container. I used old Cool Whip tubs, not at all fancy, but perfectly functional. As I mentioned, this clay still worked fine after 2 weeks, but only some of it turned out after 3 weeks, so that gives you an idea of how long it will last.

{Here are the oven-baked beads: 1 purple and 3 pink}

Dyed Pasta Beads: Speed-Dry Method

In the past, I used this method for dying pasta for bead crafts, and I still would do it this way in a pinch if I didn't have rubbing alcohol available. Recently, however, I found this way of doing it from Totally Tots. After dying pasta with rubbing alcohol, I have to say that the tremendous increase in the speed of drying outweighs the smell of the alcohol and the fact that you need to purchase it if you don't have it on hand. (Unlike vinegar, which is always readily available at our house. It has many, many practical uses, but that's a whole other post.) Rubbing alcohol is inexpensive and one bottle should last you quite awhile. The rubbing alcohol evaporates quickly, taking the yucky smell along with it, which I think makes it reasonably safe to have little ones use pasta that has been dyed with it. This is assuming that they are not allowed to consume large amounts of the pasta, which I am certain that no parent would find acceptable in the first place. 

You can dye any type of pasta, and you certainly don't need to use name brand. This is just what I happened to have. I have done this with bowties, corkscrews, tiny stars, and Ditalini to name a few. I like the Ditalini pasta because it is about the size and shape of pony beads, but costs a small fraction of what I would pay for actual beads. In the past, I have tried gel food coloring for dying, and I can say that liquid food coloring definitely works better. It is also very inexpensive, and most stores should even have it on sale right now since Easter is approaching. Liquid food coloring is versatile. You can mix your colors any way you want, or use them straight from the bottles. The neon colors, of course, are slightly more vibrant, however, there is not much of a difference between neon pink (on the right) and red (on the left). Also, blue and neon blue were only slightly more defined than pink and red.

{Dyed Pasta Beads -- shown while drying}

Materials:

• zippered baggies (1 per color)
• pasta (any kind with a hole will work for beads)
• rubbing alcohol
• food coloring
• measuring spoon/s
• flat surface for drying (cookie sheets work well)
• wax paper or similar for covering cookie sheets (optional)

Directions:

1. Separate the pasta into zippered baggies according to how many colors you would like to make. Tip: If you don't have any zippered baggies, you can also use regular plastic bags, but this could be messier, and I would not suggest having little helpers. (This is a good way to use up old bags that weren't too messy, but you still may not want to use them for foods that will be eaten. I like to wash and re-use my bags from other stuff, but that's just me. Once they have food coloring in them, I usually pitch them because it's not worth it to me to wash them again at that point.)
2. Add a small amount of rubbing alcohol (I used a teaspoon) and a few drops of food coloring. A little goes a long way so start with just a couple drops, and then add more if you want.
3. Close the bag, and shake to cover the pasta to the desired saturation.
4. Once the pasta is coated with food coloring, open the bags and spread the pasta out to dry. Cookie sheets work for this but you could also use plates. Tip: I first covered mine with the empty baggies that come in cereal boxes, which I had removed and opened up to make flat sheets of very cheap "wax paper." This keeps the cookie sheets clean and helps make sure that no pasta sticks to it. It is not essential, but I find it to be convenient for me.
5. Let pasta dry completely. Ours took no more than 2 hours, I believe. Enjoy!

Some Uses for Dyed Pasta:

• When letting kids work with pasta, you may want to first give them a cookie sheet to contain the beads since they often like to roll away and make a mess.
• Make necklaces. I like to take a small piece of tape (Scotch or masking) and wrap one end of a piece of yarn so that it resembles the end of a shoe lace. This makes it easier for little hands to string the beads. Also, the prevent beads from slipping off one end, I suggest tying a bead onto the opposite end that you used the tape. You can always remove the bead later, if you leave a bit of extra yarn for knotting once the necklace is complete. This is an oldie but goodie Mother's Day gift idea.
• Make bracelets. The simplest way to do this is the thread the beads onto a pipe cleaner, fit it to the child's wrist, and then twist off the ends. Cutting excess pipe cleaner is optional. You can always save the left over bits for other projects.
• I have also packaged up some of the dyed pasta beads along with some pipe cleaners and prepped yarn for necklaces, and Mia has given this as a birthday gift to friends.
• Make a spring Butterfly Garden Collage using dyed bowtie pasta butterflies and corkscrew pasta caterpillars. This is an idea for a Mother's Day gift.
• Make a spring bouquet of Pasta Petals from dyed corkscrew pasta. This could also be a Mother's Day gift.
• Make S'ghetti Skeletons for a Halloween craft.
• Make Beaded Indian Corn Mosaics for another fall craft option. 
• Use colored pasta in a plastic bin, cake pan, or similar container as a sensory bin. Kids can use bowls, spoons, cups, funnels, and their hands for scooping, pouring, and sorting the pasta. 

Beaded "Sun Catchers"

Here is a project Mia and I recently did on a rainy day. The goal was to create "sun catchers," but since our beads were more opaque than translucent, we just ended up with decorative ornaments. I found this idea here. The original directions said to bake for 20 minutes, but I found that ours took a bit longer, more like 30 minutes. I suppose this depends on the size of the beads you use.

{Make a single layer of cheap plastic beads inside an oven-safe dish. I think ours were from Walmart. We used ceramic ramekins, but muffins tins, cake pans, mugs, or glass dishes would all likely work. Note: I first lined ours with parchment paper to protect the ceramic in case this didn't work; I didn't want plastic melted to something I use for food.}

{Once the dishes are filled, bake at 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes, checking every so often. Note: This may be slightly smelly while the plastic melts, so I turned on the fan.

{Remove from the oven and allow to cool. This does not take very long. Once the plastic is cool, overturn the dish and the sun catcher should pop right out. Peel off and discard the parchment paper if you used it to line your dish.}

{Thread fishing line through the finished project to display. For the top one, I found a pin hole already there, but the bottom one required that I use a cordless drill and make one.}

DIY: Oven Bake Clay

We have made play dough a few different ways, but never before made clay, although they turned out to be similar in terms of ingredients. The main difference is that the clay is a bit drier. The recipe we used came from this website.

Ingredients:

• 2 Cups flour
• 1 Cup salt
• 1 Cup hot water
• 1 Tbs vegetable oil (This was optional for a smoother texture, so we used it.) 
• food coloring (optional)

Directions:

1. Combine flour and salt in a bowl.
2. Add hot water and oil if desired.
3. Allow clay to cool before kneading. (If desired, add food coloring.)
4. Knead until pliable.
5. Have fun making clay creations.
6. If you want your sculptures to be permanent, bake clay or allow to air dry. (You can also paint your sculptures after they are dry.)

After we made our clay, we divided it into 4 parts and added a different neon food coloring to each. Mia and I made beads by rolling out "snakes" and then cutting them with a knife, punching out a hole with a plastic straw, and then re-shaping as needed. We also used a rolling pin to flatten the clay, cut out shapes (I stuck with a circle cookie cutter; Mia did more free-hand cutting), and pressing rubber stamps into them for decoration. We used the straws again to punch holes so that we can hang the finished clay pieces as ornaments or tags. I put the leftover clay in a plastic container and put it in the refrigerator. We played with it the following day and it still seemed to be a good consistency, so I think it will keep for awhile if you don't want to bake it and just keep it for modeling clay.

{Before kneading food coloring into the clay}

{After kneading in food coloring}

{After Baking}

{Before Baking}

I put our clay pieces on a parchment lined baking sheet and then baked them for 50 minutes at 250 degrees since this was the suggested way for the clay to not get a "golden-brown" look, and I figured we didn't want to dull our neon colors. I am not sure if this would have mattered or not since the colors are noticeably less vibrant now that the clay has been baked. The clay came out dry on top but not fully hardened on the underside. I left them to air dry for a day or so before flipping them over. They have been air drying for another day and a half, and are still not completely dry. The website said they would take about 5 days to dry, which is quite awhile for little ones to wait. Plus, I am supposed to be rotating the pieces twice a day, and I haven't been doing this, because, really, who has time for that? I think it is safe to say that the clay will eventually be hard, but I wonder if I could have put it back in the oven for a longer amount of time and sped up the process? I hope the beads are ready for Mia to string before she has given up on them entirely.

Beaded Clothespin Butterflies

I think this has to be one of my favorite crafts that we have ever done. Not only are they cute, but even my Little Man could thread his own beads onto the pipe cleaners (while I held the pipe cleaner) so this is really a craft that can be done with almost any age group. The only part I had to do was assembling the butterflies. This was a great way to occupy our time on this very windy and somewhat rainy day. I could also see making these butterflies for Easter or for Mother's Day gifts. Here is where I found the idea for this (floating around on Pinterest).

{A couple of Mia's butterflies}

{Beaded Butterfly by Logan, Age 2 1/2}

Materials:

• wooden clothespin
• 3 pipe cleaners
• scissors
• plastic beads
• acrylic paint
• paint brush
• something to hold paint
• glue (hot glue is recommended)
• wax paper (optional)
• fishing line (optional)

Directions:

1) Paint a wooden clothespin as desired. Set aside to dry. Tip: I suggest doing this on wax paper, especially if you are painting all sides of the clothespin. It won't stick as much as it would if you laid it to dry on newspaper. Tip: Acrylic paint stains clothing so have kids wear old clothes or protect clothing before starting.

2) Leaving about one inch uncovered on either end, string beads onto a pipe cleaner. Repeat with a second pipe cleaner. Tip: I found the easiest way to do this was to bend it upward at the end so that the last inch wasn't available for the kids to put beads on. This also prevented beads with larger openings from sliding off the ends (not a big issue, but still it could be helpful.)

3) Cut the last pipe cleaner in half. Bend it in half for the butterfly's antennae. Thread a bead onto each end and wrap around to secure if desired. (Some beads may stick well on their own. You can also add glue if you like.)

4) Making the wings is the trickiest part. (The blog post this idea came from said to make a figure 8, which took me some trial and error, so I will try to make the directions as clear as possible.) Take one beaded pipe cleaner and form a circle.

Then take slightly more than 1/2 on top pull it into a small circle and bring the end over to the rest of the pipe cleaner. Fit the end in between two beads and loop it tightly around one time, making sure that the end sticks off the side that will be on the inside of your butterfly. Now you have something that looks like a lowercase "g."

Bring the other end up to meet the beads where you just twisted the pipe cleaner. Again, loop the end around and make sure that it is secured around both sections of the beaded pipe cleaner. Loop around again if needed. Now you have a sort of figure 8 with a one oval larger than the other. To me, it looks a bit like a capital "J" in cursive handwriting.

That's the first wing. Repeat step 4 with the other beaded pipe cleaner to make the second wing. Congratulations! The hard part is over.

5) Once clothespin is dry, pinch it open, add a drop of white glue or hot glue, and insert center of pipe cleaner antennae. The pipe cleaner antennae will be held in place once the clothespin is closed.

6) To attach the wings, put glue into both sides of the spring on the clothespin. Tip: Hot glue works best. Of course, this should only be used by an adult. Then, insert pipe cleaner ends into each side of the spring. Tip: You may wish to trim the ends first if they appear too long. Another suggestion is to add more hot glue as needed if the wings don't seem sturdy enough.

{I know I shouldn't brag, but isn't my butterfly so darn cute?!}

{"Princess" the Butterfly by Mia, Age 5}

7) Allow glue to dry before displaying your butterfly. I hung our butterflies from the dining room chandelier. To do this, I took a length of fishing line, and placed the clothespin in the center. Then I tied it around and knotted it off so that the fishing line was nestled into the groove. Lastly I took the two ends of fishing line, threaded them both through the an arm of the chandelier, and secured them with a double knot. I repeated this for all 5 of our butterflies.

{I love how they flutter in the breeze when we walk by.}

Beaded Indian Corn Mosaic Craft

Here is another variation of an Indian corn craft that we made using leftover dyed pasta beads and some cardboard from the recycling bin.

{Indian Corn Mosaic By Mia, Age 4}

{Mia's Work in Progress}

Materials:

• cardboard
• pencil
• scissors
• dyed pasta beads (or plastic beads)
• tacky glue
• green crepe paper (optional)
• hole punch (optional)
• yarn, ribbon, or string for hanging (optional)

Directions:

{Indian Corn Mosaic By Logan, Age 2}

1. Draw an ear of corn (long narrow oval) with husks onto a piece of cardboard and cut it out. If you don't want to draw it freehand, try printing off a template.
2. Help your child apply dots of tacky glue all over the cardboard.
3. Have your child adhere pasta (or plastic) beads to the dots of glue.
4. If desired, cut two strips of green crepe paper, glue to the cardboard, and trim the ends to look like husks as I did for Logan's project.
5. Allow all glue to dry before displaying your project. The beaded cardboard ends up being fairly heavy so it may not stick to your refrigerator. One option is to punch two holes and thread yarn, ribbon, or string through for hanging.

Dyed Pasta Necklace

{Pasta Necklace by Mia, Age 4}

Materials for Dying Pasta:

• tube shaped pasta
• food coloring
• bowls
• water
• vinegar 
• spoon or slotted spoon
• tin foil
• cookie sheets
• zippered baggies

Directions for Dying Pasta:

1. You will need one cup of water in a bowl per color of pasta you wish to dye.
2. Add 2 tablespoons of vinegar and food coloring. (The directions I found online call for about 20 drops of liquid color, but I used gel food coloring and just used a spoon to blend each color.)
3. Add pasta to the liquid mixture and let soak for about 20-30 minutes. (I used one cup of Ditalini, a short tube-shaped pasta for each color: pink, blue, green, and yellow, but other types of pasta such as macaroni, penne, rigatoni, and wagon wheels will also work if you are planning to use them as beads.)
4. Remove pasta from bowls and set on foil-lined trays. (I used a slotted spoon for this.) Discard dye or use to make coffee filter carnations. Allow pasta to dry over night.
5. Store dried pasta in zippered baggies.

Materials for Making Pasta Necklace:

• previously dyed pasta
• yarn, string, ribbon, etc.
• scissors
• tape (optional)
• cookie sheet or tray (optional)

Directions for Making Pasta Necklace:

1. Cut a length of yarn (or ribbon or string) and tie a knot on one end, making sure that it is large enough to prevent pasta from slipping off. (Tip: I like to actually make a small circle on the end before knotting and then use this as a place to secure the necklace when it is finished.)
2. If desired, wrap a small section of tape around the opposite end of the yarn so that it resembles the end of a shoe lace. This prevents the yarn from fraying when you thread the beads.
3. Thread beads onto necklace as desired. (Tip: I have found that placing a few beads onto a tray-- or cookie sheet if you don't have a tray-- is helpful. It gives you or your child a large enough area to work on, but it prevents the beads from rolling all over the place and making a mess. You can also store works in progress directly on the tray.)
4. Once your necklace is complete, tie off the end to the desired length and trim off excess yarn if necessary.
5. Wear your dyed pasta necklace or give it away, perhaps for Mother's Day.

Bendy Straw Beaded Jewelry

Mia and I were working on some umbrella crafts today using bendy straws for the handles. We had some parts of plastic straw left over, and I decided that we could cut them into smaller sections and use them to make simple beaded jewelry. We ended up with enough to make a necklace and bracelet for Mia. They remind me of colorful macaroni jewelry.

Materials:

• plastic drinking straws
• scissors
• elastic cord (or string, yarn, etc.)

Directions:

1. Cut plastic straws into small sections about 1/4" to 3/4" long.
2. Decide on how long you want your necklace or bracelet to be and cut a length of cord (or string or yarn or whatever you are using.)
3. Tie a knot at one end of the cord making sure it's large enough to prevent beads from sliding off.
4. Add beads as desired.
5. Tie a knot at the other end and wear your necklace or bracelet or give it as a gift.