Make it Monday - DIY white clay

A few weeks ago when we were round at my brother's house for dinner, Alasdair (5) and his 7 year old cousin were busy making some sculptures with some homemade white clay that my nephew had made.

 

It reminded me that I had pinned a recipe for some DIY white clay before Christmas, with the intention of making some Christmas ornaments out of it, but that I had never got round to making.

 

So, the next day we looked up the recipe and made up a batch of white clay using this recipe here.

 

I liked the idea of it as it doesn't contain flour so would be fine for the boys with wheat allergies to handle.

 

I had read the comments on that post and some people had said that their creations had cracked when drying so I was a little bit wary of it and hoped that the boys wouldn't be too attached to anything they made - just in case!

 

They made some shapes using cookie cutters and I had the idea of making some labels for some new jars I had bought for storing some baking supplies in. I used some letter stamps to add the names of what was in the jars on each label.

 

We left our creations to dry overnight as some commenters had said that drying in the oven was worse for cracking. It took a couple of days for them to dry right through.

 

And some things did indeed crack. I would say less than half of the shapes did though, and my theory is that it was the ones that had been made with clay that had been re-rolled and re-rolled that cracked.

 

My little latkes didn't crack though and I added a layer of Mod Podge to give them a little bit extra strength.

 

Then I threaded them up and added them to my jars.

 

 

 

 

So that it is especially obvious which jar is the one with a gluten free flour I wrote over the letters with Sharpie. Just to avoid any mix ups. In future I might have used ink on the stamps when using them to make this a bit neater but it's fine for now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The little model that Alasdair made with his cousin has dried very well with no signs of cracking at all so I must get his recipe from him again. I know it used some PVA glue as he did write it down for Alasdair but I'm not sure where it ended up!

 

I'll share it when I find it again!

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