"Mashed Potato" Clay

This week has been a busy week at my house. It's the first week of summer vacation for both of my boys and they are already stir crazy.  And my husband, who is in the military, is leaving for 6 weeks. So to keep my boys occupied and not sitting in front of the television all day I decided to try out the Baking Soda Clay from http://www.busybeekidscrafts.com/Easy-Craft-Clay.html

• 1 box baking soda (about 2 cups)
• 1 cup cornstarch
• 11/2 cups water
• Sauce pan
• Bowl
• Spoon
• Plastic wrap
Here's how you make it...

1. Mix all the ingredients in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring consistently, until it is too thick to stir with a spoon.
2. Cool for 15 minutes, or until the dough is cool enough to touch. Knead it for about 5 minutes, or until smooth. Keep dough wrapped in plastic. Once you have molded it, it will take 1-2 days for the clay to dry. The length of time depends on how thick your craft is: If it is a flat ornament, it may only take 1 day, if it is thick it will take much longer. This clay can be painted with either Tempera or acrylic craft paints.

The thing that I loved about this clay is that the ingredients are so simple and I had them in the house already, so when the kids were screaming for a craft to do later the light bulb flashed over my head as  I told them I would make some clay for them to play with later in the day. My youngest one was most excited and he offered to help make it. He was quite disappointed when he realized it had to be cooked and he couldn't play with it right away.

Once I was able to get him to focus on the fun we could have later that afternoon and how we could paint their clay projects once they were dry in a few days, he was ok with the wait time.  It didn't take long to whip up and once it was ready to rest for 15 minutes it looked like a pot of mashed potatoes, which the kids though was funny. They now call the clay, Mashed Potato Clay.

 

After the clay cooled for 15 minutes it was time to kneed it and make it smooth. Let me tell you that 15 minutes is not enough to let this cool. I would have let it go a little longer but I wanted to stay true to the recipe. I dumped it out onto a cutting board and started to kneed it. It was really hot still so I would fold it over fast and kept doing that over and over. The other problem was that it was really pretty sticky and kept sticking to my hands. I don't know if I didn't cook it quite long enough or if it was just that it was still to warm. I fixed this by grabbing the container of cornstarch and sprinkling a little mound on the board and dusting my hands with it and adding a little more to the clay. After about 5 minutes it was shaping up nice and I didn't have a big mess on my hands.

 

  Now it's off to a plastic bag to finish cooling until we can make our Mashed Potato Clay creations. 

 

Gavin  adds feathers to his creation

Squishy

 

 

Conner called this his "Clay Burrito"

Overall I would say that this clay is pretty good and I would make it again. I think I would add more cornstarch than it called for and cook it longer than I did because it was really soft and you couldn't make vessels that were very tall or they would smush in, and it still was a bit sticky at times.  I would rate this project a 7 out of 10  because it was easy to make and the kids had a blast.