The Pride parade is coming up this weekend in San Francisco and my girls are super excited to get decked out in their rainbow gear and go along to watch.
We've got rainbow t-shirts, rainbow socks, rainbow tattoos, and now thanks to this super simple DIY, we've got rainbow hair clips!
These heart shaped rainbow hair clips were so easy to make that the kids were pretty much able to do everything by themselves - and they had a lot of fun making them. They're keen to make more of them in different colors for different events and holidays. And just for fun!
Here's a look at how we made them...
Sculpey Clay in Rainbow Colors
Small Rolling Pin (I like this acrylic Clay Roller)
Knife for cutting clay
Optional: Craft Mat to protect your table surface (I like this one)
Start by cutting a small piece of each color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple) of the Sculpey Clay. The lines on the Sculpey Clay come in handy for making sure you cut the same amount of each color. We used an eighth of each block.
Roll each piece into a snake with your hands. Make sure to keep the thickness and length of each snake as even as possible.
One you have rolled each color, place them closely together in rainbow order.
Using the clay roller (or rolling pin) roll gently over the clay lengthwise. As the clay is rolled out the pieces will stick together. Roll until the pieces are all attached and to a thickness of about 3mm - 5mm.
Once the clay has been rolled out, grab your cookie cutter and start cutting out hearts. We were able to cut seven 40mm width hearts from our clay.
To mix things up a little we alternated the direction of the cookie cutter so that our hearts were a mix of horizontal, diagonal and vertical stripes.
Not keen to waste the remaining clay, I rolled it up into a ball and the kids messed around with rolling it out to create marbled patterns. This created some pretty fun patterns (and a few that were a flop!).
Sculpey Clay needs to be baked to harden, so we lined our hearts up on a baking sheet lined with parchment and baked for 15 minutes on 275F (130C) as per the instructions on the Sculpey packaging. The clay needs to be baked for 15 minutes per 1/4" (6mm) of thickness. Our hearts were a little thinner than this but 15 minutes seemed just about right.
Once the hearts had completely cooled I used a hot glue gun to attached them to the alligator clips.
If you plan to wear clips on both sides of your head, make sure to glue some with the clips facing left and some with the clips facing right.
Once the glue is dried the rainbow heart clips are ready to wear!
These hair clips were so much fun to make - and so easy - that we'll definitely be making more soon. I'm thinking red, white and blue stars for Fourth of July, marbled shamrocks for St Patrick's Day, red and pink hearts for Valentine's Day... So many fun opportunities to get creative!
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