Crafty Corner: Little Jewelry Dishes

So, this season's contribution to The Red Door I saw in a magazine awhile back. It looked simple enough and I wanted to give it a try. The magazine inspiration:

My finished work:

It was a fun little project that I could complete in an afternoon with just a few supplies:

I purchased Fimo clay in a variety of colors, a set of tiny stamps with a bunch of patterns and a few oven safe bowls for baking. I had a rolling pin, craft mat, parchment paper and cookie cutter already on hand and was ready to go.

First step was to roll out the clay. I placed one package of Fimo between 2 pieces of parchment and rolled it out. This took a little muscle and patience...I kept rolling until it was around 1/4 inch thick:

When I was happy with the thickness, I cut out a circle with my cookie cutter and placed the excess clay in a baggie for later use (Sidenote: I had a bunch of scraps left over so ended up mixing a few colors together to make some marbled dishes...I think those were my favorite):

Next, stamps. I tried to make an even amount of well placed stamp marks around the whole circle:

After pre-heating the oven to the temp directed on the Fimo wrapper, I prepared my baking vessels with a light coating of vegetable oil and carefully pressed the newly stamped clay circles into the dishes. The dishes I purchased were kind of nice because they had a cute wavy edge which the pliable clay molded right into (any oven safe bowl or dish works fine as your mold- it just depends on the shape you want for your new creation):

I ended up baking them for twice as long as recommended on the wrapper as suggested by some clay blogger type people online. It was hard to know if the clay was 'done' and they all said that longer was always better and would not hurt the clay. Also, there was a slight odor while baking- not too strong but those helpful 'Clay Blogger' people said that it was not dangerous. Open a window if it's bothersome. It took a little finesse to carefully remove them from the ceramic dishes but I did so half way thru the bake (and just placed the Fimo bowls onto a cookie sheet) to assure that they were evenly 'cooked'. After cooling off, they were pretty sturdy.

I really liked the finished product:

But, after looking at them for a few days I decided they needed a little more pizazz. Enter Mr. Gold Leaf Pen:

Much better! Fimo was quite easy to work with and this was a super fun weekend project. I'm glad I tried it and I hope you do too:)