This is an easy craft for all ages, since any age can mix play clay colours together to get a colourful abstract pattern. This craft allows you to freestyle your design or be more deliberate and create alternating coloured circles to create a geode. Have fun practicing colour theory and see what colours mix together to create a new colour. For younger children play clay is a great way to develop fine motor skills, while older children will enjoy using their creativity. This craft is meant to not have many rules and just let the kids roll out the colours, smash them together, and have fun. Sometimes crafts have too many rules and too many materials. So this one was designed to be simple and fun!
To create these fun colourful geodes you’ll need wooden coins. Any adult can cut them from a branch found in your own backyard or from a fallen in your neighbourhood. Use a cutting tool of choice, from an electric saw or a handsaw or even a sharp knife, be careful cutting the branch and use tools you are familiar with. You can also find pre-cut wooden coins at craft stores, on Etsy or in certain art and craft sections at box stores. If you can’t find small round pieces of wood to put your creations on, you can omit that step and just create play clay geodes.
By using play clay your creation won’t fully harden, but there are ways to make the clay hard to the touch. The best way is to set it in the fridge or freezer for an hour or less and the cold will make it hard. It will stay that way at room temperature. To re-soften it just work it with your hands to warm it up. You can also choose to wreck it afterwards and make something new another time, although the colours will now be entwined. You can add a hole to the back of the wooden coin and hang it on the wall.
MATERIALS:
various colours of play clay (it comes in a box full of many colours).
wooden coin ( flat circular wooden discs made from cut branches).
STEPS:
Roll out the play clay into long strips.
Create circles onto the wooden coin - start small and get bigger as you create them outward, alternate the colours (see the image gallery step by step below).
OR
Mix the colours together however you chose and flatten it out the wooden coin, peel off any excess play clay (watch the claymation video demo).
Here’s a step by step image gallery to create a more defined geode pattern:
We loved how colourful they turned out and it reminded us of the galaxy. This could easily turn into a planet, sun and moon project...but that’s for another day!
We hope you have fun creating this craft! You can easily turn this into a tree decoration to go with our other geode ornaments but placing a string on the back with glue or a stapler.
If you’d like more geode craft ideas check out the other ones on our blog. Follow us on Instagram @acorns.and.aprons and tag us if you create one of our geode crafts! We would love to see what you created.