For my fourth clay project I decided to use a tutorial app that I found called DIY Clay Craft. As of right now, I would say this was my least beneficial learning tool. There are short videos for a few mini projects you can make, but there are no detailed steps or instructions to follow. I would say this app would be most useful if you are looking for some inspiration, but, you’re probably going to find more literally anywhere else.

On the app, I did find a video that showed how to create a pineapple that looked like it would be a good way to work on my detail skills. The whole project was for a fruit basket but since I just did fruits for my magnets I wanted to try something else.

Inspired by the pineapple and that I just got a fish tank, I decided to try and make Spongebob, Patrick, and Squidward’s houses as a decoration for the tank. I’m going to assume that everyone knows what I’m talking about, but just incase you don’t, SpongeBob SquarePants is an animated cartoon from the early 2000s and the main character lives in a pineapple!

To start, I attempted to make the sand that the houses sit on. I used one of my tools make sort of a sand underwater look and got the circle shape by using a mason jar lid as a cookie cutter.

I then wanted to try and pre colour my clay to save myself the painting step. My first thought was to use acrylic paint, but that made the clay quite sticky. I tried again using food colouring and that worked a lot better. To get a bright colour though, you have to use a lot more than you think you are going to need.

After getting the yellow to the right shade I used a bit of slurry to smooth the clay and started making a marshmallow shape. I used one of my angled cutting tools to make the lines in the pineapple, then started on the leafy part. I repeated the same steps with food colouring and created more of a teardrop with the green. I used scissors to create the leaves like the video suggested and then stuck the pieces together with slurry. I made sure to make deep etch marks this time to ensure my clay stuck together better than last time!

I then started working on Squidward’s house.. I was proud of the colour I was able to get by mixing blue, red, and a tiny bit of green food colouring, but that was about it.

Because of how the food colouring was reacting with the clay I decided to just paint Patrick’s rock. I couldn’t leave Squidward’s house looking that crazy, so I decided to remake it without the food colouring.. and it looks a lot better!

This is my final dried product, I’m a lot happier with this version than the previous. Once it is fully dried I am going to paint and seal it, I’m quite excited to see it finished!

Thanks for reading!