hand-shaped ring dish diy

a few months ago, i was searching the depths of the internet for something special that finn could make for jeff's mom for her birthday. it's always a struggle to find that right mix of sweet, sentimental, and somewhat purposeful (that last one often gets looked over simply because there are not many useful things that small children are capable of making) - but this was one that i thought was worth sharing.

we used this tutorial and made hand-shaped ring dishes and were really pleased with the end result. it's a super simple activity, and not all that time consuming (so just perfect for limited attention spans). it was also quite cost effective- a package of air dry clay is only a few dollars and would easily make several ring dishes. i believe i may have even seen similar clay in the craft section at the dollar store. (though don't hold me to that. i'm not a huge dollar store shopper, so i get instantly overwhelmed when i go in those places and lose all sense of brain function. ;) )

we tried a couple variations of this project- my favourite being the one shown here, plain white clay (not painted or decorated in any way, which could be a fun addition to this project). but we also made one using oven baked clay (fimo or the like) in various shades of greens and yellows and used a marbling technique shared over on a beautiful mess blog. the end result of this version was really cute and little bit more fun visually than the plane white clay.