I saw this little decor “plant” on Etsy that was reminiscent of a crossover between the sand worm in Beetlejuice and the Little Shop of Horrors’ Audrey 2. It was so cute, I decided to try my hand at making my own.
What You'll Need
- A pot of some sort. I found this one at the dollar store. It’s plastic so it can be stored easily and won’t break. It’s also very lightweight and I liked the color enough to keep it like that so I didn’t have to do any extra painting.
- Hot glue gun
- Hot glue sticks
- Fake moss
- At least three 2 oz squares of white Sculpey polymer clay. You will need one for each tentacle.
- White paint
- Black paint
- Painting accessories: brush, palette, cup of water, and surface protector
- Piece of cardboard bigger than the opening of your pot
- Something to cut with (scissors or an X-Acto blade)
Step 1: Sculp and Bake the Clay Tentaticles
Sculpt each block of polymer clay into a tentacle. This was my first time sculpting anything out of polymer clay so it was a little rough, but after some playing around with it I got it to a point where I was happy. I rolled the clay in between my hands to stretch it out and make it look like a snake. I stuck one end to a flat surface to give it a flat base as I molded the top to a thinner point and tried smoothing out the body of the tentacles. I tried to give each one a different look based on where I was going to position them coming out of the pot. Once you are done molding, you will need to bake them in the oven to harden. Based on the directions, you will want to bake yours at 275 F for 15 minutes for every 1/4″ thickness. I guestimated that mine was probably 1 1/4″ thick so I had mine bake for an hour and fifteen minutes which was pretty close to accurate. With white clay, you may find that it gets a little burnt if left in too long. That was the case for me on the bottom of the tentacles, but for this project it doesn’t matter because I was going to paint over them anyway.
Step 2: Prepare the Pot's Platform
While you are waiting for the clay to bake, you can go ahead and make the base for your tentacles that will sit in the pot. Place your cardboard piece on a flat surface and flip your pot upside down on top of it. Trace the diameter of the opening of the pot on the cardboard with a pencil and then using that traced circle as reference, cut at least 1″ into the center of that circle so that the circle you are cutting out is smaller than the diameter of your pot. You will hot glue the edges of the cardboard circle and place it down into the opening of the pot to make a base. If your pot becomes more narrow toward the bottom, like mine, this will work perfectly for you because the cardboard circle will fit perfectly where you have glued and will be too big to fall further into the pot if for some reason it couldn’t hold the weight of what we will be gluing to it. The narrowing sides will give it extra support.
Step 3: Paint the Tentacles
Once your clay has baked and cooled down, coat the tentacles with a bright white paint. You may need a few coats of this, but it will help cover up any imperfections in the clay like smudge marks, finger prints, or burning. As soon as the white paint dries, you can begin painting bands around the tentacles with black paint.
Step 4: Glue the Tentacles and the Moss
Your tentacles are dried and you can now hot glue them in whatever orientation you would like onto the cardboard base in your pot and then fill in the spaces of cardboard still visible with fake moss, gluing it down with hot glue. Make sure the moss is covering the base of the tentacles enough to give the illusion that they are coming out of the moss.
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Display your little horrific creation proudly and enjoy all of the compliments you get during the Halloween season.
Do you know how many ounces of sculpy clay you used? This is a really cute idea. Thank you!
Thank you! I used three packages which I think are 2 oz each so 6 oz total.
This was a great little project and mine turned out spectacularly. Thanks for the idea. I made a few changes that may help people, but it works just fine without them. Here’s what I did to tweak the project:I used tin foil on the inside of the sculpey as a suggestion from our craft store manager. She said it’s much easier to get the form you want and use less sculpey in the process.I painted the tentacles white but then painted over that with Glow in the dark paint. Black stripes were painted on afterwards. I also formed the base much like the OP did, but I cut out pieces of felt,hot glued those on the bottom,THEN, hot glued them on the cardboard. I thought it would glue on a bit better that way. Finally, I used both green and purple moss to give it a little more interest. Great project!