A family friend of mine recently gifted me a huge batch of crystals. (Thank you 🙂 )
I’ve been toying around with the idea of combining clay with minerals, glass and stones for a while now. But 11th grade has successfully killed all of those plans. Regardless, a couple weeks ago school was a little relaxed, so I made this little guy.
Tutorial
Materials Required:
- Polymer clay in black and white
- Gold leaf (I used imitation gold leaf)
- Tissue blade
- Sculpting tools
- Crystals
Step 1: Roll out some black clay and cover it with a gold leaf sheet.
Step 2: Thin out the log so that the gold leaf separates out into flakes. Do not mix the gold leaf into the clay. Just let it remain on the surface.
Step 3: Start by making a circular base.
Step 4: Roll out many thin logs of clay with tapered ends
Step 5: Attach them to the circular base
Step 6: Roll out a separate ball of clay to be used for the head of the octopus
Step 7: Roll out the ball slightly to form a stump with a flat base
Step 8: Pinch the flat side and flare it out
Step 9: shape the round part of the head to it hangs off the mid line
Step 10: Place the head on the base and blend the base with the head
Step 11: Add two white circles for the eyes.
Step 12: Add black dots as the pupils and press them in with a dotting tool.
Step 13: Choose the crystals you want to use.
Step 14: Coil the tentacles around the crystals. Use foil and baking paper to position the tentacles a certain way.
Step 15: I felt that the eyes looked too creepy, so I added eye lids.
Step 16: Bake the octopus
Your octopus is done!
You can use the basics discussed here to make octopi in other settings too. For instance, I made this guy quite a while back. The treasure chest is full of old jewellery and some golden beads.
The past few times I’ve baked, my clay has cracked. I’m doing nothing different, but I can’t figure out what’s going wrong. If anybody has any suggestions to stop the clay from cracking, drop them below.
See you in the next post!
Geeky Kalakaar 
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