DIY Colourful Snails Polymer Clay

Hey guys :)

today I want to tell you how to make some colourful snails. You can use them to decorate your home or for example as a gift for someone.

I had these pretty shells collected over the time and I really wanted to turn them into something cool.


Some of them I painted lines and dots on in complementary colours. For the very small dots I used dotting tools (you can get those really cheap on ebay, for nail art)

I rolled out some clay in nice colours that go with the shells and started forming the snail. For that I simply rolled a sausage and rolled it thinner on one side so that tapered into a point. This is the 'tail'.

For the antenna on the head I took my fingers and sort of pinched the clay a couple of times in various angles at the top of the head, on both sides to produce these antenna. You can alsoe add the antenna from seperate clay but using my way you make sure that they are secure and don't fall off. I did the same below the first ones to make the smaller antenna.

Then I pressed the shell into the body, removed it again, added liquid clay and put them back. You can also glue them on after baking if you don't have liquid clay but make sure you press them in once for the indents.

That's it, here are the ones with painted houses:

Polymer Clay Snails with Painted Houses

I also left some houses unpainted because I wanted to make a bit more colourful bodies. To achieve a kind of marbellised effect use complementary coulours of clay like greens and yellows or reds and oranges and roll them into snakes. They don't have to be the same thickness and number. The thicker you make the snakes of one colour the more dominant this one will be. Then put the snakes together randomly forming a sort of log. Roll the log on your work surface with your hand to make it longer, then fold the ends together and roll it again. Do this as often as you like until you have your desired effect.

After that roll out your snail as above. The pinching of the antenna also helps in preserving the pattern here. Otherwise it would look cut off.

Here are the marbellised snails:

Polymer Clay Marbellised Snails

I hope you liked this small DIY. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions in the comments and tell which snails you like best :)


See you soon