Tropical Leaf Trinket Dishes
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Here is a super easy project to do during a free afternoon. You won’t need any templates or special materials to make DIY trinket dishes, just some clay and some paint. Because the project is so simple, you can even make these with your kids. It’s a great opportunity for them to explore their creativity while you also explore yours. You can customize them with any illustrations or color palettes to match your specific home decor. At the end of the project you will have adorable dishes that are both stylish and functional!
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Tools & Materials
- Small bowl to use as a mold
- Paintbrushes (flat and fine tip)
- Sculpey Clay
- Acrylic Craft Paint (off-white, forest green)
- Pencil
- Krylon Gold Pen
Steps
- Gather the tools and materials listed above.
- Form a ball of clay and place inside your bowl. If you are making multiple dishes, form a number of balls that are the same size.
- Press the ball into the bowl to form a dish that is about 1/4″ thick.
- Gently peel ball out of the dish and refine the shape as needed. Bake in your oven according to the package instructions.
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Tips
You should be able to find all of your materials at your local craft store. We specifically used Sculpey brand clay and a Krylon brand gold pen (find links in Shop this Project!). You can use this technique to create any size of DIY clay dishes, but the bowl we used to mold our dishes was about 4 inches in diameter. After you paint the dishes white, you can really add any painted designs you would like. We love our floral and botanical themes, so our maker Jessica free-handed the tropical leaves. Paint whatever inspires you!
Get Inspired!
Once you make your DIY trinket dishes, you can use them functionally, decoratively, or both! Create a pretty display for your coffee table or entry way, or use them as clay jewelry dishes. Browse all of our DIY jewelry projects to get you started, or see what other crafts you can make with clay. How are you planning to use these dishes? Let us know in the comments! Head over to our membership page to join our crafty community, and follow us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter for daily inspiration in your feed. Cheers! ~ Lia & Team
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Discussion
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41 Comments
These are so cool I love how they’re rough so i can see where your hands shaped them. Reminds of the dishes my son made in pottery class.
We love how these turned out, glad you do, too!
Nice ideas! These would be great soap holders in a fancy bathroom too!
Ooh love that!
I just purchased some polymer clay and am going to try my hand at this project!! Wish me luck!!
http://www.hashtagpanic.com
Yay good luck!
How many dishes can you make with one clay package?
Depends on the size, but at least 5.
Wow, fantastic. This is realy beautiful. Now I know what I’m doing with my old dishes. Thank you for the inspiration, happa fall and all my best from Austria
Elisabeth
Happy fall to you! 🙂
These look lovely! I could definitely use one of these on my desk to collect little scraps from crafting.
Thanks!!
love these and plan to make them…Did think that you could actually spray the bottom with gold spray paint, then do the top edge with the pen. I am a little nervous about drawing the greenery. Guess I will practice a bit first. Love little ring dishes. Nice little gift that takes up no space.
Yes you could certainly spray the bottom! You can practice, and if you use pencil and draw lightly, you can always erase or paint over if you don’t like it 🙂
These are so cute! I love your designs
Thanks Lisa!
Loving this Lia! Have been brainstorming for some monstrera leaf DIYs to post about now that spring is on us but still drawing a blank 🙂 Feeling v inspired after seeing this post 🙂
Yay glad to hear it 🙂
Doesn’t it need some kind of polish in the end? Are the paint and gold pen harmful to food or eating from the bowl? Thanks.
We made these as trinket dishes to hold jewelry and other bits– I doubt these are food safe and would not recommend eating from them. You could add a layer of gloss or mod podge to seal the paint if you’d like.
These are super pretty! Thank you for sharing such a lovely idea!
Thank you, so glad you like this!
I absolutely adore these! Let’s add plants to everything please 😀
Thank you! Isn’t it fun?! 🙂
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