Things to Try Thursday-Clay Pens

I saw this awesome tutorial for clay pens over at Little Birdie Secrets.

I thought this would be a great project for the kiddos to make for the hubby, and the grand, and great-grand fathers for Father's Day.  Seriously, men in our family always have a pen on them!!

It took a couple of tries to get our pens to turn out.

Helpful tips:
1.  You need to cover the entire pen with the clay.  If not, they plastic pen melts and bends, or melts and shrinks. 

2.  Don't bake the pens for more then a couple of minutes at a time.  I followed the directions on the clay package.  The oven got to hot, thus the reason for tip number one.  I heated my oven to 300 and then turned if off and let it cool for a couple minutes and then placed the pens in for about 5 minutes.  If they aren't done, then place back in the oven for a minute or two longer at a time.  Seriously they shrink and the clay will crack if they are left in the heat for too long!!

3.  Have an exacto knife, or a sharp knife on hand.  The plastic melted at the tip and I wasn't able to get the ink back in to the pens.  I had to use the exacto knife to scrape the opening out in order to get the ink to fit back inside the pen.

All in all this was a fun project, not so much for my kiddos, it was a little more involved than I thought.  Probably better suited for a little older kids.  My 4 and 2 year old contributed by helping me select the color combos.

Happy Sculpting!!