10 Fast & Unique Clay Projects!

A few months back I created a post in my community asking you to tell me what would you make with this amount of leftover clay and you gave me some great ideas but to be honest I completely forgot about my little ball of clay and it's now hardened. So what I decided to do is just get a new package and share with you all of the ideas I came up with that you can make with your leftover clay. If you're not new to my channel welcome back, if you're new welcome I'm Paula and let's get creative. Here's footage of me opening the little ball of clay I thought I had perfectly packed so it wouldn't harden but yeah I opened it to realize that for some reason it didn't stay soft for the three months I neglected it. So I opened an additional package of clay and decided I'm just gonna grab pieces of clay from it that are close to the size of the original ball and make stuff with each piece. The first idea came from a subscriber suggestion, yes three months ago, which means I'm making it and I'm going to send it to her as promised. This person gave a great suggestion on that post and she also has beautiful things to say of all of my content. I am so grateful to have her as a kind and positive member of our community so I'm very happy to make this tiny gift for her. By now you may have guessed I am working on a little rainbow for her suggestion but I'm also adding a cloud to it so that the space connecting the two will serve as a paintbrush rest. I always struggle a bit with clay so I tried my best to make this rainbow smooth and to make the cloud fluffy so that it looks like it's around the rainbow. I smoothed out the tiny sculpture and this is how it dried. Time to paint it, pretty straightforward. I painted the cloud with blue and for the rainbow I am going traditional with all seven colors in the right order. I used my paint markers for this and they were great especially because I miscalculated the space I needed for all seven colors to fit in at first and correcting the lines was super easy with the markers since I just had to go over the As a finishing touch I wrote thank you on the bottom of my little sculpture to thank Karen for her beautiful input and I added a little heart. I thought I would put my initials on the side since my signature is too big for this and I added an extra white heart because I love the one on the bottom so much. I'll show you how the rainbow looks varnished and with a brush at the end of the video. Next project and again we're starting with a similar ball of clay. I am creating a very simple ring holder so I actually don't need all of it but just a little part of it. I rolled the part that I'm using into a cylinder and then slowly taper one end. Once I had a shape I liked I flattened the thicker side and pinched the top to create two little ears. Polish the surface as much as I could with a wet brush and that was it. When it dried I painted it entirely with white and I know this clay dries almost white but I wanted a cleaner white if that makes sense. I wanted the white to be a clean background for a monochromatic design inspired by chinoiserie. It was really fun to use all of my different shades of blue around the cat. I loved playing with the floral motifs creating an almost symmetrical design with tiny variations. I love how the dark blue looks layered on top and you can still see all of the work that I did behind that. I realized I did not model a tail for my cat so I painted one with my white posca and then added the details to its face like the nose eyes and whiskers. That was it and again I'll show this to you varnished and holding rings at the end of the video. Third idea and again same amount of clay and starting with the cylinder. This time the cylinder is thicker and shorter and I pushed my finger through the middle to create a container much like you would do a pinch pot. When I liked the size of the hollowed cylinder I took out more of the clay from around the hole with one of my tools. Then I tried to smooth all of the edges and the interior using a wet brush. I used the clay that I had from emptying it to create a long strip of clay that I wrapped and attached at the top. Here's how it dried and as you can see it cracked a lot on the inside. I used my modeling paste to quickly fix that by filling in the cracks. Time to paint and I chose blue for my little container and neon colors for its headband. I drew two different eyes and a smile with bug teeth. I was going for a goofy look. I know this looks like a senseless little tiny container but believe it has a perfect use. I'll fill it up for you at the end of the video because I did not have any of what goes in at hand at that moment. Fourth idea and again cylinder and a pinch pot. This time much wider but it's not very high. I thought I would use the plastic thing that just appeared on my desk to have a better shot of making a nice circle. I tried to keep it as symmetrical as I could which is not an easy task for me to be honest but I got to a point where I was happy with it so I set it aside to work on the second part of this idea. I used the rest of the clay to sculpt a tiny bear. I apologize because I know it's hard to see this tiny amount of clay being modeled between my large fingers so I'm just gonna skip to show you the finished body and then me adding its head on top. When it dried I was ready to paint it like a little rocky fire pit that the bear was looking into but after the gray was on I decided that that was super boring so I painted on top with shades of blue and purple. I thought it would be cuter to make it whimsical and have this cute little fellow looking through to see the sky. Maybe it's a cloud he's looking through or a puddle that reflects the sky, I don't know. It doesn't make much sense but it's pretty. So I went with it and finished painting the center in a similar fashion to Van Gogh's Starry Night. For the bear I just went with brown. It's hard to paint something this tiny but I did add its face and purple to his tiny ears to tie in the whimsy. I finished him by drawing a tiny little crescent moon on his bum. I'm using this tiny tray for paper clips but I think it could also be a cute ring tray. Moving on I decided to create a pocket panel. I don't know if you've seen these but it's something cute and small that you can give to a friend as a tiny keepsake that they can keep, you guessed it, in their pockets. I'm making mine really simple. Pointy hat, round body, tiny arms and legs. And I'm also making the back flat because I thought it would be a good idea to add tiny magnets to it so if your friend doesn't want to carry it all the time they can attach it to something. Which I guess that means I'm just making a magnet. Well I also thought if it was flat you could attach it with a little piece of double-sided tape or something to a birthday card or to a gift. That was super tiny again and hard to see the modeling part so here it is dried. Super easy paint job, two solid colors and then just a few details with paint markers on top. To make it cuter I glued a tiny pom-pom on the top of his hat. Made the shines in the eyes a little bit wider and done. Ready for varnishing. Sixth idea. For this one I'm really only using a tiny amount of clay. Again, sculpting a tiny little character since I'm making a plant guardian for a small plant. A few weeks back I shared a video of ideas of what you could paint with your paint markers and on that video I painted an artificial plant and I absolutely loved it. I think it was my favorite part of the video and because now I am obsessed with this plant I thought it would be cute and very whimsical to have a little plant guardian on its pot. So I made a little mushroom guy and he has a tiny tiny frog on top of him. Here's how they drive. They can't really stand but that's okay because I know I can prop them on the plant and it will be okay. Again, painted everything with my acrylic paint markers. The brush nib was really useful for this project. Added a few details like hearts on top of the mushroom and all of their tiny features which were honestly super hard to paint. So tiny! And this was especially hard to do through the camera. But it's done and almost ready to be guarding my plant. Idea number seven. I think it's seven. Is it seven? I am really bad at counting on these boys over so if it's not seven I apologize. Anywho, yet another similar ball of clay and this is definitely the simplest of the ideas but it's one of the cutest. I just made that ball of clay a little smaller and smoother and it's now more like a blob with a flat bottom. Then I pushed in a little hole on the top right in the middle. Made it as smooth as possible with the brush and yeah, done. Dried and painted it with a solid color so done again. To finish, some huge cute eyes painted with acrylic markers, a few more details on the face and this one I am going to jump ahead and show it to you because the leaf that you put in it really makes it look finished. How cute is that? Okay, number eight. Starting with the same ball and this time I'm modeling an egg out of it. It looks like I made it super fast but it really took me a long time to get the nice regular egg shape. I spent a lot of time smoothing it out. When it was done, I grabbed some floss and sliced it in the middle. Then I wanted to attach magnets on both sides so that it could close again, much like a Ferrero surprise egg. So I marked the spots for the magnets, emptied the egg and again, much like a surprise egg, I wanted to have a tiny surprise in it. So I sculpted this little guy to go in the middle. I went through the whole process which was honestly the longest of all this video but sadly this is how my egg dried. It was such a fail. The sides don't match up anymore and of course it doesn't close properly. It really looks more like the plant from the Little Shop of Horrors. Because as the pieces were drying, I saw that this was going to be a fail. I tried to make a second one off camera. It dried much better. I mean it almost looks like an egg but it was still a fail. So to still deliver 10 ideas on this video, I made something else. I modeled all of these little stars and circles with clay. Much simpler idea but still valid I guess. When all of these pebbles dried, I painted them with a solid color. The stars I left plain but the circles I decorated with markers to look like little planets. To finish them, I thought I would add a little bit of dimensional mod podge on top instead of plain varnish. Once they were dry, I drew a tic tac toe cross on top of a little jewelry bag and done. A little clay game. This was so cute and easy to make. You can probably make a few in one sitting to give to friends. Now, I did not have the heart to discard this little guy along with the failed eggs so I painted him too. This is Yolky. He is now homeless. The poor little thing. To add to its yolkiness, I thought I would drench it with the dimensional mod podge too so he would look a little bit slimy like a yolk. Poor tiny yolky. We'll see how he dries. Okay, next idea for which we have our ball of course and this time I'm using the whole thing to model a dog. I have come to the realization that for a dog lover, doggies are seriously underrepresented in my crafting and on my shelves. So this one I'm making so he can hang off the edges of things. In particular, I was thinking he could hang off the edge of a frame. It dried with a few cracks but that's an easy fix with the modeling paste and at first I thought about painting it white since it looks like a ball terrier but then I thought it would be too much like bullseye, the target dog. So I switched to gray but that gray seems so serious so I lightened it up with white and when it dried I thought it would be fun for the dog to have a rainbow going through the middle of his ears onto his snout. I didn't know what to do in the back so at first I painted little hearts on the end of each of the rainbow lines. That immediately did not work but I tried it anyway. Tried it, disliked it and painted on top to cover them but I still wanted the pup to have more color so my first idea was to have his paws stained by rainbow colors. Three colors on one side, three colors on the other one but again that did not look great so I painted over that too and I finally landed on having one of his paws have rainbow stripes too just like the ones he has on his forehead. To finish it I painted a cutie mark on his bum and I'll show you how he looks hanging from my frame at the end of the video too. For my last idea, believe it or not, this was the inspiration. I have a couple of stickers that my friend Christine sent me when we did the create this book challenge and I love them so much. They're just sitting on my shelves because I haven't decided where to put them on because I don't want to waste them. Yeah, I am that crazy person. I blame the 90s because we used to collect stickers and they were so precious. Anyhow, I decided I'm gonna have this little guy hold them. So yeah, this is a sticker holder and again I decided to sculpt a dog just giving my adored dogs more space in my work. Molded the body and then long arms to go over his head and a tail. Put everything together and I used a piece of cardboard to create a slit on his hand so he can hold the stickers. For this little fellow I did go more traditional so I painted him with a light brown. Went lighter for his snout and then painted darker brown spots on his tail, ear, paw and belly. Finally, I painted the details on his face and he has his tongue sticking out because I wanted him to be playful and a little bit derpy. And here is everything we made today. Varnished and ready. Karen's rainbow brush rest with a brush for display. My cat ring holder with rings. My silly toothpick holder. I really thought it would be fun to create this character with a headband and then have him have toothpick-ass hair. The tiny cute dish with a wandering bear that I'm using for paper clips but you could use for rings. A cute pocket pal or magnet for a friend's birthday. The guardian for my artificial anesthetic plant. A happy mini blob vase. Yolkie, the now homeless mini bunny. A cute little dog to hang on frames. And my other dog proudly holding up Christine's beautiful sticker. I'll link her shop in the description in case you want to get one too. And that's it from me today. I hope you enjoyed all of these little ideas and that you're having a wonderful day. See you next Friday! Bye!