Marbled Polymer Clay Trinket Dishes

I’d been wanting to make clay trinket dishes for a long time, and I finally bought a variety of clay I could use to try it out.

I’m only getting started with clay, but I’m loving it. Before this project, most of my experience with polymer clay came from my little clay nativities. This was a fun and different—and colorful—way to experience it, and now I’m hooked.

Here are the supplies you need to make your own clay trinket dishes.

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• Polymer clay in assorted colors
• Rolling pin or glass jar/bottle
• Craft knife or clay cutting tool
• Circle template to trace around (I used a small bowl)
• Oven-safe bowl

I used a combination of Sculpey and Fimo clay for this project. I probably don’t know enough about clay to be too particular about brands, but I had no issues working with either of those. There are so many different varieties, and I even managed to sneak in a little glittery clay. LOVE.

I bought a rolling pin a while back specifically for working with clay, and I was so excited to actually use it! The cool thing about this rolling pin is that you can adjust it to only roll to a certain depth. Very very useful for getting a uniform depth all over.

I’ve collected some assorted clay tools over the years, and I used a little purple plastic knife to cut out the bowl.

We use Corelle dishes every day, and those turned out to be perfect for this. They are oven safe, and we have two different sizes that worked perfectly for me. I was able to trace around the small one, and I used the bigger one to form my shape of my clay bowl.

Let’s make a trinket dish! Here’s what I did…

First, I chose my colors. I went with white and four other colors. I used more of the white than the others. I wasn’t sure exactly how much to use, so I was winging it here. I rolled the clay into little “snakes” about 6 inches long. How much you need depends on how big your bowl is going to be.

Once I’d rolled out all of my little clay “snakes,” I gathered them all up and twisted them together. I was aiming for twisting them until the twist was about twice as long as it started out, but it ended up being a little shorter. I folded it in half and twisted it again.

Then I rolled it into a ball. At this point I should have realized that I wasn’t going to get as much marbling as I wanted and twisted it some more. (I learned in future attempts.) But I didn’t, and I moved on to the next step.

Using my rolling pin set to 1/4”, I rolled out the ball of clay.

I set the smallest bowl upside down on top of the clay and traced around it with the plastic knife. I peeled away the leftover clay and smoothed out the edges of the circle a bit with my finger. 

I checked to see which side of the clay I wanted to be face up, and then I draped the circle face down over the bowl. I centered it as carefully as I could. I put the whole bowl onto a little baking sheet and put it in the oven. Different brands of clay may have different baking instructions, so it’s important to pay attention to that. I found it convenient that the instructions were based on items 1/4″ thick, which is exactly what I had.

After my clay had baked, I took it out of the oven and let it cool for a while before popping it off of the bowl and letting it cool some more

The finishing touch was painting silver along the edge of the dish. I probably should have sanded the edges down a little first, but I think it looks fine.

A bonus step would be to seal the bowls, but I haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to do that.

When I made the next couple of dishes, I went for more marbling, and then I matched the color of the paint to the clay I used. That’s all I did differently, though. I was originally intending to bake the clay inside a bowl instead, but outside worked very well with the bowls I had. You can do it either way.

One of my next projects is to figure out what to do with the leftover clay. I transferred them to a tray and saved it for later. I’m thinking of making some jewelry, so now I’m working on 3D printing some tiny clay cutters in different shapes.

Let me know if you’ve tried this or are going to! Feel free to share with me on Facebook or Instagram. Happy crafting!