How to Make Polymer Clay Tentacles

I’ve found a super great use for these Sculpey ball tools and the Etch N Pearl tools: tentacles! Everyone keeps asking me WHY tentacles but basically it’s a steampunk thing – like Jules Verne and such. Also… COOL. And they’re SO much fun to make I thought I’d put together a little DIY instructions for you.

At first, I rolled balls and poked them onto a snake with a tiny ball tool:

But it didn’t seem right. After some actual research, wherein I discovered that octopuses have TWO rows of tentacles, and some trial and error, I found a better way!

So check out this wee tutorial:

Roll out a snake of any size and any type of polymer clay, thicker at one end. Don’t make the thin end TOO thin!

Use the smallest inverted ball end of the Etch n Pearl stick to make a row of circles down one side of the snake:

The deeper you indent, the better it will look at the end!

Do a second row of circles down the other side of the snake, which will be getting flattened and kind of pointy in the middle!

OK here’s the magic part. Take the medium ball end of the sculpey tool:

And push it into the middle of the hole.

It will splay out the center like a sucker! OK this one isn’t so great and I messed up the second one… but you’ll see.

Continue down the row of suckers with the ball tool. Be sure to push it as straight down into the hole as you can – don’t angle it or you won’t like the results as much.

Look at how sucker-y the ones near the tip are!!

And of course – do the other side!

Let the clay rest for a bit.

Curve the tentacles any which way you like – either flat on the baking surface, or wrapped around something like these soldered circles:

Now there are options for colouring – paint or mica powders – but my fave is chalk! I like doing it darkest at the back of tentacle and lighter to the sides; brush it lightly down the suckers but keep it mostly white.