Cooking for the kids takes on new meaning with this homemade faux polymer clay recipe. Just remind them it’s not edible. I found the original recipe on a great blog “diy natural”, they have some really great ideas on there. I'll definitely check them out for more projects to do at home. I changed the measurements to match my needs. You can find their original post in this link DIY Natural .
I wanted a homemade polymer clay recipe to make little charms with my daughter. But we actually didn't make charms this first attempt.
Here’s how I made it:
1 cup corn starch
1 cup baking soda
1/2 cup water
Simmer and stir on low heat (keep stirring)
Set aside to cool
Knead clay like dough when cool
After the clay is cool, knead it with your hand like dough. If it is too crumbly you can add tiny drops of water and it should help. Now you are ready to create charms, ornaments, or figurines!
I made some figurines for Halloween, a little pumpkin, witchy hat, a bat, and a cute ghost. My little girl loves dinosaurs so for her we made a dinosaur, sadly he broke after baking :( we also made a dinosaur bone, dino eggs, and a couple of dino fossils I imprinted from a dinosaur skeleton toy.
If your little one loves animals you may consider making imprints of animal tracks that would be just as cool, they can explore and guess the animal on a later date. I may do that with her another day. Once you finish molding the clay into the shapes you like, bake it at 250 degrees for about 10 minutes. I used my convection oven so I could keep an eye on them.
I didn’t use food coloring as I thought it will be fun to paint our charms with acrylic paint after we baked them, and it was fun although messy...very messy. Also, I found that the acrylic paint peels off easily after painting, so that's a concern with kids, plus my daughter went a little overboard painting hers, but hey it's part of the fun :)