Ladybirds in clay

Air drying clay is something that I discovered after coming to the UK. I'm sure it is available in India easily too, but I never entered a hobby store in India! So the only clay I was familiar with was Play-Doh that my daughter used to play with. Turns out, air drying clay is pretty cool too.

Our first tryst with this clay was when we made Diwali Lamps with them. It was a great experience, moulding colouring and designing them with glitter glue. Our second project was realtively very simple. We made ladybirds with it and used it in our Christmas Nativity display. This was an activity lifted straight from Mister Maker. A is a huge fan of the series, thanks to her creative grand-mum (Paati). Paati and Pethi (grand daughter) duo used to watch it regularly back home and the interest has sustained ever after the move overseas.

I assure you, this is the easiest of all the projects you would ever attempt or have already attempted. All you need for this is air drying clay, a spoon, ear-buds and colour! Thats all!

You need to take a blob of clay and apply it on a spoon to obtain the shape of the ladybird. The picture above is self-explanatory, I hope.

Once you have got the body of the ladybird, you need to take 2 ear-buds and cut them in half.

Insert the cut ends of the ear-buds into the clay to form the limbs of the ladybirds. And you are done with the craft part. All you need to do now is to colour the ladybird once the clay has completely dried.

We coloured with regular water colours, but I think acrylic would prove to be a better bet for a more polished look.

Aren't these pretty pretty ladybugs? :-)  And wasn't I right about the easy craft bit?