Love working with polymer clay, and enjoy creating things?
You may have some fun constructing a colorful, little box to use in the nursery. You can choose any shape that you like for embellishing your box like circles, stars or squares, and you can make your little ‘cotton ball holder’ any size that you wish, though about three inches is optimum. This project is easy, because you will create each side of the box as a flat piece of clay, and then you will construct your finished ‘cotton ball holder’ from them.
You can embellish the sides of your box with anything that strikes your fancy, and in this demonstration we will use seed beads to add a little shimmer to the sides of the box. However, you could use buttons, tumbled glass or stones or just about anything else that you find interesting to incorporate into the design of your box.
Start with two 2 oz packs of translucent polymer clay and a couple of 1 oz packs of various colored polymer clay for your design. Knead them well. Then roll out your translucent clay to an even thickness of about ¼ inch thick. You can use a couple of bamboo skewers as a guide so that you can create an even thickness. Once your clay is rolled out, cut out your decorative shape, such as a circle, star or square. We will use a circle in our example. You will repeat this process for each of the four sides of the box.
Roll out your colored clay and cut circles from it to place in the holes that you punched out of your translucent clay. Then pat them into place. Roll your clay piece one more time to seal the circles in place. Then using a pin, select seed beads to imbed around the perimeter of each circle. If you wish you can mix shapes on your box sides as well. After you have embellished the imbedded shapes, you can cut the clay to the finished size of your box.
Next, roll out the top and bottom of the box in the same fashion. Leave the bottom plain, and add a single circle with beads in the top. Now you are ready to bake the six sides at 250 degrees for about 15 minutes. After the sides are baked and cooled, you are ready to assemble your ‘cotton ball holder’.
For the top of the box roll a small ball of clay to form a ball for a top knob and affix it to the colored circle embedded in the clay top. Then use an extruder or hand roll a snake of colored clay with your fingertips. Press a strip of colored clay around the four edges of the lid to finish it. Then assemble your box using the extruded, colored clay as ‘glue’. Place the clay along each edge and connect the sides and bottom of the box together.
Then bake your completed box and lid, as before, and once it is cool, it is ready for cotton balls in the nursery.
Article by Jessica Ackerman of WallDecorandHomeAccents.com - your top place to buy outdoor wall art and tree wall decor.
