Even the craft-impaired can make these adorable birdie cake toppers

I would like to introduce you to our birdie cake toppers of cuteness! Now, perhaps I am more proud of these than I should be… after all they are not perfect. I can see my fingerprints in parts and they are not perfectly symmetrical, but they are to represent us and we are flawed. Besides that, I am not a sculptor, and I have never considered myself crafty.

The cake toppers have been my wedding DIY albatross. It actually never occurred to me to craft anything for the wedding. I buy things. That is how I roll. But my fiance expressed that he had faith in my never-used crafting abilities, so I give it a go and, as usual, he was right — I CAN do this stuff. I can craft all the things! I would never be able to get things done if I insisted on perfection so my DIY goal is always to get to “good ’nuff.”

If you want to make birdies from clay, give this a try.

What you need:

• Clay. I used Sculpey — 1-2 blocks of the main body colour (blue), a beak colour (yellow), flower colour (white) and black for eyes and a bow tie
• Rolling pin (I used a water bottle to roll)
• Assorted clay tools

STEP 1
I found the clay really likes to be rolled up and manipulated and warmed in my hands. To make the bodies I first made blue balls (hehe) then shaped them a bit like eggs as I rolled. The boy-bird is bigger because I am quite short and he’s rather tall, so it amuses me.

STEP 2
I rolled smaller balls for the heads and set them back a bit so the chest puffs out a little. This helps for attaching tie/boutonniere details.

STEP 3
I also found rolling out cylinders made it easy to cut off equal sizes for wings. I liked making the wings by making tear drop shapes then rolling them out (I used a water bottle to roll). I used the tear drop shape to make a tail as well. I bought these yellow plastic clay tools and used those for adding a bit of detail to the wings and tail.

STEP 4
I then made the beak — this was really easy, just a ball pulled out to a beak and flattened on the other end. Since I was working with yellow, I made the yellow stamen of the calla lilies because they are easy to smush into shape out of clay as it’s a single petal wrapped around a centre and done.

TIP: Work with only one colour at a time and scrub your hands before switching colours.

STEP 5
I moved onto white which I used for the eyes and the calla lilies. The eyes are just tiny circles flattened.

STEP 6
I finished off with black clay for the eyes. I rolled the clay out flat and cut the tie before attaching it.

STEP 7
Bake the clay according to the package directions.

STEP 8
While the birds cooled I made the veil by gathering tulle together with a few stitches. Once the birdies were cool enough I used a toothpick to manipulate the glue from my hot glue gun into just the right place for the veil.