The Art of Inchworms

Hello! Today I’m going to be going over how I make clay inchworms, and I’ll show you a couple that I’ve made recently. 🙂 Making clay inchworms is rather a strange hobby for sure, but I enjoy it a lot.

To start with, I get a selection of greens, blues, yellows, and white to mix up for the inchworm body. Almost all of my inchworms look a little different because I mix up a new batch of green just about every time I make an inchworm. The nice thing about not having a recipe is that I can use left over scraps and it doesn’t matter if the color has a bit of another color on. 🙂

When I’ve mixed up all the colors, I roll the green into a long log and then round off the ends and smooth out any creases.

Then I make the log into an inchworm by curving it into an inchworm-like shape and cutting lines into it’s back. And of course it needs eyes. 😛

Then I marble some colors together (or just get a solid color) and smooth the lump of clay out to make a platform for the inchworm to stand on. I don’t like making it a perfect oval or circle, so the platforms are another thing that vary with inchworms.

Finally I characterize the inchworm by giving it ‘props’. I am not very good with miniatures, so this is the hardest part of making inchworms for sure. It’s also hard to think of new things for the inchworms to be after you’ve made thirty plus inchworms. I also like to glue on the props with polymer clay glue so I can be sure they won’t come off. After I made the baseball for this worm, glued it, and baked it, I didn’t like it and tried to get it off. I finally did after much tugging, but it was pretty hard. I guess that’s a good thing!

Any suggestions for what I should name this inchworm? 🙂 Or any suggestions for what inchworm I should make next?

Alright, on to my three latest worms. Let’s start with my personal favorite, Gandalf.

I gave him a blue hat like Tolkien’s Gandalf. In the movies he has a gray hat, but I went with the books. 😛

As you can see, Gandalf’s staff is just leaning against him since he has no hands. 😛

Onto Bert the Bookworm!

 

I’ve made a bookworm before, but I decided to improve and make Bert. He looks much more inchworm-like and has more books than my other one.

Now for my most recent (other than the baseball player) inchworm – the chef/baker. He doesn’t have a name yet either, so if you think of anything I’d be happy to hear your suggestion in the comments. 🙂

Now that I think about it, all three of the inchworms above were remakes. My old chef just had a bowl of something or other, but my new one has some cookies on a cookie sheet.

And thus concludes my inchworm tour! I hope you enjoyed this post. 🙂

any name suggestions for my inchworms?

what inchworms should i make next?