What I made

1) Sharks will eat anything…

2) …especially cheese straws.

3) But they love fish the most!

Phew! This craft project has been a bit of a monster (excuse the pun) – I finished making the shark 3 weeks ago, but it has taken me ages to complete the hand drawn tutorial. Anyway, it’s all done now, and I hope you like it.

The Shark is made from Fimo – a polymer modelling clay manufactured by Staedtler. This is the first time I have used a polymer clay, it’s great fun and easy to use, and of course the best thing is you can harden it by baking it in the oven. You can also use wire to support your model, which is really useful, and made it possible to create the shark shown above.

My original idea was to create a toast rack where the shark looks like it is eating the toast. That didn’t really work out (I couldn’t make it big enough) however it works really well with cheese straws, bread sticks and even pencils. Oh… and for a bit of gory fun I also made a half-eaten Fimo fish to hook on to its teeth.

Please note: You will obviously still need to ‘bake’ your model to harden it. Also, there are several makes of polymer clay, I used Fimo, which is readily available in the UK, and I think, available globally.

Download project files›

Includes:
1) Collectable instructions – they are useful and they look good
58 downloads so far, thanks everyone! (updated weekly)

If you are not very familiar with Fimo (or with polymer modelling clay in general) check out Maddy Hill’s Mad Imaginations blog, she has a whole category dedicated to her Fimo creations.

I had huge ambition. I was going to create something intricate and inspiring from my son’s Play-doh. Think of the Sony Bravia Play-doh bunnies TV ad, but bigger and better.

I threw myself into the task… green, yellow, purple, black, blue … there were pots, lids, and little balls of play-doh everywhere. I was going great guns. 3 hours later my masterpiece was complete. A splash, splat and spill!

Some say our neighbourhood is a little… should we say, ‘rough’. I’d agree, even my snowman was beaten to a pulp.

Anyway, luckily I took this snap of him while he was in his prime. As you can see, he was a tall, thin, proud, well-dressed snowman sculpted entirely from pure fresh snow – no dirty lumps of coal or rotten carrots in sight. With hindsight, however, I should have stopped short of sticking his tongue out – I think that’s what upset the ‘locals’.

I reckon very few people can say they once made a full-size man shaped suitcase – it’s definitely something to tell the grandchildren!

This was another one of the many models I made for pitches while working as an Art Director. Bizarrely, making models had nothing to do with my actual job, so not sure what it said about my Art Directional contribution! Anyway, we won the account so perhaps my suitcase played an equally oversized role.