I came up with the idea after seeing some very ornate clay and painted glass vases on Etsy. My mentor teacher picked up the glass paint before coming out for his last visit, and his wife donated glass jars of various sizes for the kids to use.
The clay was bits and pieces from three packs of Sculpey I had left over from last year. A little really does go a long way in this project. We spent a lot of time talking about how to plan a gift for another person and how to think about what they like and what they would find beautiful before getting started. Most of my students picked spring garden scenes because their mom's loved plants. However, one did a jungle scene and another opted for an ocean scape showing the island in the Bering Sea his mom grew up on.
Each of the kids came up with their own technique for creating their scene. Some used rope coils to create their followers, filling in the gaps with pressed clay. While others layered pressed clay to create standout flowers with petals. The only time I got involved was when a student wanted to use a long coil of clay wrapped around the jar to form grass but didn't have motor skills to actually roll the coil, so she directed me on exactly how she wanted it done.
This ended up being a two day project since the clay needed to be baked onto the vases. After the clay step, I took the vases home over night and baked them on a cookie sheet at 275F for 15 minutes. The next day the kids used air dry glass paint to add in the background.
