We recently lost one of our dogs, Penny, to cancer. She was only 12 years old and the softest dog you could ever wish for. In what was clearly going to be her last few weeks with us I desperately cast around for some way to preserve some memories of her. I hit upon this post in Pinterest which uses salt dough to create an ornament with your child’s footprint. This was the perfect way to create a little memento of Penny that we could keep. However, I wanted something a little more durable (some of our salt dough ornaments got damp a few years back and melted) so I decided to use an oven bake polymer clay instead.
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Being the kind of craft stash hoarder / gatherer that I am, I bought some plain white polymer clay on Amazon. In my impatience for it to arrive I visited my local craft shop and found that they too stocked the polymer clay but with added sparkle! How can you turn down a bit of sparkle?!
Needless to say I bought a few more blocks of polymer clay in white glitter and a dark blue glitter (I figured I’d make up some paw print ornaments for my other dog, Turner, at some point).
Here’s what you need:
- Block of polymer clay* (I used Fimo which is oven baked but you could just as easily use an air drying clay, simply follow the instructions on the pack regarding drying times).
- Rolling pin*
- Baking paper*
- Drinking straw or skewer (to make the hole)
- Oven tray*
- Optional: round cookie cutter – if you don’t have a cookie cutter you can substitute with a tub or a cup that is an appropriate size. To be honest, I didn’t even think of this at the time so our ornaments ended up with an uneven edge – I like to think of it as a ‘rustic’ look.
Instructions:
- Pre-heat your oven to 110°C/230°F (use manufacturers recommendations for fan assisted ovens).
- Open the pack of polymer clay, break it in half and start rolling one half into a ball in your hands to warm it up a little. This will make it a little softer and easier to use. You might want to use more or less depending upon the size of your pet’s paw.
- Tear off a piece of baking paper (no larger than your oven tray) and place the ball of clay onto it.
- Using the rolling pin start rolling out the clay until it is roughly 5mm thick (it doesn’t matter if it is a little thicker but you don’t want to make it too thin). Ours ended up being 7cm across.
- Then comes the fun part… put the baking paper and the clay on the floor (or table if your pet is small enough to pick up) and press your pet’s paw into the clay.
Penny was too big to be picked up so we had to place the clay on the floor and try to press her paw into it. This wasn’t easy as it sounds because Turner, being the nosey greyhound that he is, kept barging through to see what we were up to and trampling over our work. After some hysterical bouts of laughter and some re-rolled clay, we finally(!) managed to get a print we were happy with.
- Now you have your modelling clay with a paw print impression on it, if you wish you can use a cookie cutter or whatever you have to hand to cut out the print and give it a nice edge.
- Use a drinking straw or skewer to make a hole for the ribbon.
- Place the baking paper and the clay print onto a baking tray and bake in the oven for a maximum of 30 minutes. I ended up leaving it in for 25 minutes.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool completely. Thread with ribbon and hang.
The paw print looked so cute we made two more. I decided to leave mine plain but you could always use acrylic paint to colour the actual print and decorate the edge. If you do be sure to use an acrylic sealer to protect the paint.
In the end I only used one block of fimo so there is plenty left over for other projects (watch this space!).
Happy crafting!
