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Salt Clay Beads
By mel | August 18, 2007
The Girl is definitely a crafty, art project type of learner. She loves coloring and painting and gluing. There are numerous kids crafts websites that we like. When I saw the project that involved making your own beads out of salt clay, painting them, and then making a necklace, I was all over that. I make jewelry…this would be a project that would allow The Girl to make her own jewelry like I do. Making the salt clay was pretty easy, with the only ingredients being salt, flour, and water….also alum, if you are going to let it self-harden as opposed to baking it. I didn’t happen to have any alum, so it was baking for us.
We measured and mixed the ingredients and then stirred until it was ready to knead.
That was good for a few minutes of entertainment.
(Notice the shiner The Girl is sporting in these pictures.)
We began making beads. The recipe made enough dough for a lot of beads. The dough began to harden up a bit as we were rolling (and rolling, and rolling, and rolling) our beads. Stopping and rekneading ( is that even a word?) helped. Then we poked our holes with a nail and placed them on a cookie sheet to bake. Actually, I did most of the poking because the beads smooshed really easily.
We had so much dough that I thought it would be cool for The Girl to make a hand print. And she threw in a paperweight for her dad for good measure.
When we removed the beads from the oven, most of their holes had baked closed. @%$#%! I repoked (How about that? Is that a word?) all of the beads that I could.
I spent about 15 minutes getting all of the paint and things ready. The Girl painted about 5 beads before she declared she was done. Well, awesome, then. After I convinced her she hadn’t painted enough for a necklace, she begrudgingly came back and painted a few more. She painted the hand print and paperweight the next day.
All in all, the project was a good one. It was easy to make the dough. The hand print and beads turned out really well before we baked them. They didn’t look as nice after…and the shape changed a bit. If we decide to use salt clay for something in the future, I would like to try it with the alum. Now where does one hang a fluorescent pink keepsake?
Topics: Meh., Crafts, The Girl, Uncategorized |
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:31 am
Wow I love arts n crafts! I wish I was there to make stuff out of salt dough with you! Another cool sough recipe is “clean mud”… Its made entirely of soap shavings and ripped-up toilet paper and water! If you get the recipe right, the things you make will harden as they dry, and you can later paint them. I’ve only done it with toddlers so I never got as far as the painting phase… Maybe you can try it some day!
September 27th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Awesome dough project. Last week, I worked with instant paper mache for the first time and it was super great and I could see thousands of possibilities for it. The Girl might love it. I found it at a local craft store and the brand was Celluclay but I think there are other brand names. You basically just add water and woot! woot! it’s a crafting party.
October 8th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Hi Mel, it’s cool that your daughter loves this type of hands-on activity. I was never very crafty, and admire people who can create beautiful things with their hands.
I have an autistic kid in preschool, and I’m considering homeschool for him in a few years (when he reaches that age where he might suffer from bullying by NT kids in school, and because many times we don’t find adequate resources in regular schools to teach our children according to their unique needs). So my question to you is, would you recommend any materials that you use to teach your kindergartner how to read, do math, etc. My son started spelling and reading sight words very early. I see this as a way for him to compensate his difficulties with oral language processing. I wonder if I encourage him to build on his reading skills, he’ll learn more and more about the world in order to catch up with his same-age peers. Thank you.