Scary Skewers! A fun little halloween project...

We're fans of the sculpting clay at the Madison house. We keep a nice and messy ziploc bag of it in the Craft Cupboard for random crafting occasions. It's messy because we save every little dot, no matter how mixed up it got when creating the previous project. You never know when you're going to need that little dot to make an eyeball or something...

Speaking of eyeballs, this was a little project I did with my 10 year old daughter (and crafting maniac) Julia with clay and thin wooden skewers. I wanted to do skewers because we are big bento box lunchers and I thought it would be fun to have a skewer of eyeball grapes and other disgusting lunch food for Halloween week. I haven't told her this part so unless she gets off the Webkinz site and reads this, then my secret is still safe. I think I'm pretty safe.

We spent about 45 minutes thinking of ghoulish halloween things and molding them from the clay. My husband even joined in; his is the alien. My creepy spider with fangs and black widow markings had his legs fall off so he didn't make the photoshoot cut. We couldn't for the life of us figure out how to make a bat. What else do you think would work? A skull? A vampire? Some kind of severed limb?

CRAFTING NOTES: Make the object fat so it fits on the skewer securely. Before you bake the clay creations, push the blunt end of the skewer in so the hole will remain after it's hardened. Then when they cool from the oven, fill the hole with some tacky glue and insert the skewer. Leave them to dry and you're all set. And in case there are some neurotic mothers out there--you know who you are because you gasped at the thought of me sending a potentially dangerous sharp stick in my kids lunch box, I'm going to snip the sharpness off the skewer before I send it to school. Don't worry.....