Floral Jewelry Dish

Let’s get crafty with Mother Nature and Mother’s Day! Here is a simple fun activity and gift idea. My son and I will be making a lovely pressed floral jewelry dish. ❤️

We went to the fields to look for some wild flowers and leaves. This part of the activity was nice because it got us talking about what was growing during spring and what type of blooms and greenery might work best for flower pressing and leaf pressing.

The clay we used was a terracotta modelling clay. It can air dry to a hard durable finish without need for firing. It takes 24 hours to dry.

This project was nice and simple. Rolling the clay, pressing the flowers into it then painting it.

The follow is a step by step to show how it’s done.

Materials:

Air Drying Modelling Clay

Metal tray *optional

Non-sharp knife

Round Bowl

12 cm circle container

Water

Wild Flowers

Leaves

Acrylic Paint

Brush

Paint dish

Sand paper

1. Here are the leaves and wild flowers we collected.

2. Make sure the flowers and leaves have noticeable textures and shapes. Let your children look closely at the structure of the plants.

3. My son will be making a 12 cm diameter dish.

4. Roll the clay into a ball.

5. Flatten the clay ball with a rolling pin on the metal tray. I am using a smooth metal surface, if you don’t have a metal tray, you can use any smooth stain-resistant surface.

6. Now the magical part, pressing the floral on to the clay. Be gentle when pressing, use finger tips to press.

7. Let your children be creative and arrange their floral patterns.

8. With the flowers and the leaves firmly pressed in, my son can now remove them.

9. Orlando’s first floral print.

10. Now that the floral print is completed, we can cut the clay into a dish shape.

We are using a cylinder container as a guide to create a 12 cm circle. I ask my son to follow the cylinder using a non-sharp knife to cut the extra clay out.

11. After it is trimmed to a neat circle, remove the cylinder container. Get some water to smoothen off the rough and bumpy edge. Once the edge has been evened out, we are ready to slowly lift the clay off the tray.

12. Place a round bowl upside down. (We picked this bowl because it has a smooth round bottom)

Placed the clay over the bowl then gently press the clay down to form a dish shape. Make sure the floral side is facing down.

13. Finally touch up, repeat using water to smoothen the dish bottom.

14. Once it is done, we took our work out to air dry for 24 hours.

15. When it is completely dried, we smoothen off the side using sand paper.

16. Together we made three jewelry dish and a cookie.

17. Now we are ready to paint and decorate using acrylic paint. We are painting the floral prints with gold, sky blue, green and white. Then we decorate the rim with gold.

18. Making this with your kids, not only will you end up with a nice piece of decor, but you’ll also have sweet memories of your time together. My son made an extra dish for his cookie as well.

DADA LAND LIFE

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dadalandlife