Air Dough Snake

Cole requested a 'king cobra' theme for his birthday party this year. My cop-it-out attitude took over and I began searching for a cake topper of the king cobra variety. No such luck. At least none that I liked remotely.

I looked for king cobra toys of a certain size and had miserable results.

I finally decided that if I couldn't buy it to satisfaction, I'd have to make it. We looked into making a cobra shaped cake but with school, an infant, and general life obligations -- there was no way I'd have the time for that.

I was looking for a non-toxic clay that I could shape into a snake. It had to be colored or easily colored. At Michael's, I found this.

Model Magic by Crayola. It's a quick drying clay that only needs to air dry. Overnight produces dry to the touch clay and 72 hours produces a fully dry figurine.

I bought two of the 7 ounce packages in black and one in yellow.

Using some real images of king cobras, I began to work. I didn't think to take any in-progress pictures -- sorry!

The clay stretched so much further than I anticipated. I rolled the body between my hands and then when it was a satisfactory length/volume for me, I laid it out and curved it to my heart's desire. I took miniscule amounts of the yellow, rolled them into a toothpick sized roll, wrapped them in bands around my black body and squashed them flat like a pancake to form the stripe.

Using an eye dropper, I gently pressed on the snake in no real order to try and create scales. It was hardly visible on the black so I didn't complete it on the black.

To get the head to stand up nice and tall, I broke off a piece of a hair pik and formed the head around it. The head is made up of two pieces of black clay, one for the neck and flare (which I formed in lumps on either side and then pinched while pulling gently outwards and down), and the other for the mouth.

Once again, I employed my eye dropper and pressed somewhat firmly to create eye holes.

Overall, I'm pleased with how the snake turned out. I'm not a big fan of the ugly splotches on the yellow but it went unnoticed by the four and five year old party guests.

The snake didn't bleed at all onto my cake (although he did bleed during drying on my paper towel). I wouldn't recommend a paper towel as your holding station since it almost stuck right to it.

The clay wasn't sticky to handle at all. I only used a teeny amount of the yellow clay and a small amount of one bag of the black clay. That clay goes really far!

I think my snake looked charming on his terrarium cake. He is very lightweight and feels durable enough for gentle handling. I would absolutely use the model magic in the future.