Clay Art Project

Creating a clay necklace

In art class today, we created clay necklaces as part of our clay project. We learned several new techniques to work with clay, such as coiling, hand building, hollowing out, kneading, rolling (the clay), and scoring. While we did not use all these techniques in this project, it was an interesting presentation, nonetheless. Here is the necklace I created:

The steps in creating a clay necklace are listed below:

1.       Take a clump of clay and knead the clay until it has reached the desired consistency. (When clay is fired to harden it, it is necessary to knead the clay well to remove all bubbles to avoid an explosion.)
2.       Coil a piece of clay by rolling a ball of clay back and forth until it stretches into a snakelike shape in the diameter you choose.
3.       Hand-build the clay or manipulate it into the specific shape you want. We were required to have at least 5 beads on our necklace.
4.       Hollow the clay out with a dowel or other round, thin, object to create a hole thick enough to thread a yarn through the hole. It is necessary to hollow it out before it hardens.
5.       After creating the beads, let them dry for 24 hours.
6.        Paint them with watercolor paint. We were required to use at least three different colors and add some designs on our beads. (When I painted my beads in class, their was no water available at my table to clean the paintbrush when I switched from one paint to the other; this caused my paints to mix and my beads did not have one pure color when I was finished. I actually had to repaint them later, but this time I made sure I had water available to clean my brush when I switched paints.) 
7.       Thread the beads (clay) onto a piece of yarn to create your own personal necklace.
8.       Wear with pride.

Extension activity

Clay can be used to make many different objects in the elementary classroom. In a Social Studies unit, when animals are studied that are native to Africa, students could use clay to create a whole line of African animals to reinforce what they are studying. The students would be required to paint their clay animals before they are displayed. This would definitely be an enjoyable experience that most 1^st to 4^th graders would love.