gone bowling

A couple of my friends and I decided to do a Secret Santa swap last year. We pushed it off till now, so it ended up being a Secret Easter Bunnies swap instead. One of the rules was to send handmade items.

So here I was, trying to figure out what to send, other than jewelry. I had been scrambling to make stuff for the Handmade Bash, and knew I could just give that, but it seemed like a cop out.

I searched around for something else to make, and decided on a ring bowl. I’d always liked the white ones sold at Anthropologie, kind of like this.

Luckily, I found a great tutorial from Sodapop design. It’s in German, but the pics are pretty self explanatory. I translated the text using Google translator, and came up with this adapted tutorial.

To start, I gathered my materials:

-Sculpey clay (I just got this at JoAnn Fabrics)
-lace to make your design (a paper doily works fine too)
-a cookie cutter (a cup works fine too)
-rolling pin
-either wax paper or a silipat to roll the clay on
-acrylic paint (optional)
First, I rolled out the Sculpey on my Silipat, then placed my lace on top.
By the way, don’t roll your clay out directly on the counter, or you will have to restart. I made that mistake, and couldn’t scrape the clay off the counter without ruining the design.

Then I rolled the lace into the clay.

I carefully peeled back the lace

and used my cookie cutter to cut the clay into a circle.

Next, I peeled the clay circle off my Silipat, and put it into a oven-safe bowl. I used a shallow one, because I didn’t want the finished bowl to be too deep.

The oven-safe bowls went on a cookiesheet, and were baked. I just followed the baking instructions on the Sculpey packaging.

After they were done baking, I let the clay cool in the bowls.

Now for the finishing touches.
I ended up making a little birdie to perch on the lip of one of the bowls. To make it easier to glue the bird to the bowl, I cut out a little triangle of clay from the bottom of the bird. This was baked standing up, at the same time as the bowls.

I attached the little bird I made to the lip of one clay bowl.

On another bowl, painted it with two coats of gold acrylic. Had to use a small brush to do this, for more precise painting.

I ended up using this as my business card holder at the Handmade Bash. (More on the Bash later.)

In all, it’s a good thing I didn’t default to just giving jewelry for my Secret Easter Bunny gift. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have had my little business card holder!