The Story of the Clay Cloud Magnets

Have you heard me talk about the Makers' Collective yet? It's a non-scrapbooking Design Team I joined recently. Yes, I said it's not about scrapbooking! What it is instead is a subscription based system where you get sent kits to make home DIY projects. The projects are interesting and varied in nature, and I'm here to share my February project from my Makers' Box (sorry, it's a little late!)

So I totally forgot to take the photo which showed you everything that came in this kit, but obviously it has everything you need to create these air-drying clay cloud magnets, with enough supplies left over for other projects. It also comes with a complete set of instructions which make it really easy to follow along. So easy in fact, that I knew my 5 year old was going to have a ball creating her own version of the project alongside me. So that's what we did!

The templates themselves are totally adorable, and the first step was to cut them out.

We rolled out the clay to about 0.5cm thick... or as much as Moriah could manage. Then placed the templates on top and cut around them. Obviously I didn't let Moriah use this sharp knife to cut hers, all I let her have was a butter knife, which actually worked just as well.

The best part was that the clay is air-drying so no need to worry about baking it. But it takes a lot longer obviously, and we left ours for 24 hours as recommended. After both me and Moriah had made our own versions of the cloud and raindrops from the template, we still had at least half of the supplied clay left over which meant that once Bethany came home from school and saw what was going on she wanted to join in as well. She didn't want to make clouds though, she preferred a flower. We simply printed off a flower shape from Google and then she followed the same set of instructions.

Now the project kit came with a couple of suitable markers for drawing on the simple cute face on the cloud that you can see on the template. But if you know me, I'm not usually one for taking the simple way out, and I thought we could get a lot more creative with paints instead... but these don't come with the kit.

Moriah doesn't need direction when it comes to this sort of thing, and she simply painted what she felt like, which was this fabulous block pattern. Bethany, suffering from a lack of patience at that point in the game went for a very simplistic approach with her flower. Not that it's any less effective!

Strong glue and magnets to adhere onto the back was what finished off the project. After I used up the supplied magnets on one set of the cloud and raindrops, I simply cut up pieces of those flat 'junkmail' advertising magnets that you probably have a thousand of if you're like me, and stuck them on the back instead. The clay is thin and light, so those flat junk magnets do the trick just as nicely.

Now whilst I'm super late on showing you my February project, I have already done my March project as well, and let me tell you, it's completely different whilst being just as fabulous. But I'll leave that sharing for another time ;-) All the details you need to sign up for the Makers' Box for yourself can be found here.

What I will tell you about in the meantime is the celebrations going on at the Makers' Collective right now!

Which means it's also time for lots of giveaways!!

Check out all the details on how to win this (and other prizes) here.