Monday, December 19, 2016

Pokemon Menorah


Supplies:
3 packs red clay (with four divisions)
3 packs white clay (with four divisions)
1 pack black clay (with 8 divisions)
3 knives for cutting clay
gloves if you are smart and do not want to stain your hands


Take two sections of white clay and roll into balls.  Do this four times.
Wash your hands or change gloves.  Do the same with the white clay.
Use your knife to cut the balls in half.  They will squish a little, but it's okay.  Just make sure you use different knives for different colors.



Using the black clay knife, slice one of the thin black pieces.  Work it with your fingers so that you have two sections.  Smush it gently into the red half.  Put a candle between these pieces, then put the white piece on.  Use a napkin so that you don't get your red fingerprints all over the nice white clay.  An unpatterned napkin would be good.




Do this eight times, placing the balls next to each other and pushing together.


Now it's time for the shamash holder.  Take the remaining packs of red and white clay, and roll all four sections into balls, keeping a little bit of the white aside for the ball in the middle.  Each of these will be half of the shamash.


Put a layer of black clay throughout the middle and push together.  Then take a little piece of black and roll it into a snake.  Take the little bit of leftover white clay, roll into tiny sphere, and smush it down to make the circle for the middle.  Wrap the snake around the white circle.

Dig out a little of the middle of the pokeball, and put the black-edged white circle there.


Carefully push a candle down into the shamash to make the holder.  Go back over all the candleholders to make a little bigger because the clay will shrink slightly.


Bake as instructed by the clay package.  Ours was 275 degrees, 15 minutes per 1/4 inch.  We baked 2.5  hours.  Should have done more but we had to get to a birthday party.  Still came out awesome!