I can’t say enough about how much I love sculpey.  It’s just the most awesome polymer clay for kids and adults. (Check out this collection of Alien Army figures I made one summer pre kids)  It’s one of my absolute favorite art materials and though on the pricey side, I find it to be well worth it.  I’ve taught a sculpey class for years at my school and always the biggest hit of the class is this seven layer cake.  It’s looks really sophisticated to make, but is surprisingly simple, even for the kindergarteners.  Most of the kids in my class, ages 5-12, leave with a pretty delicious buffet of seven layer cakes to enjoy.

Here’s how to make them.  Start with seven sculpey balls in your favorite colors.  You can do a pattern of a few colors as well.  Balls are the most basic sculpey shape and usually start most sculpey projects.  You can roll the sculpey on the table under your open faced palm or between your two open palms.  Once you have 7 balls, you flatten them each with your thumb like a pancake and stack them one on top of the other.  This is the bases of your cake.  Next is the icing or “fondant,” as I like to call it with the kids.  They’ve seen enough cake making shows to know exactly what I mean.  I put a small handful of sculpey through our craft machine, which is similar to a pasta maker.  If you don’t have one you can easily use any sort of roller or even your palm to flatten out the sculpey.  The fondant is the trickiest part.  You wrap the 7 layers in the fondant sort of like a wonton.  Flatten it all around by pressing the fondant onto the 7 layers and then pinch or trim off the edges.  Sometimes I roll the cake on it’s side to press the fondant to the cake.   I have to help the younger kids with this part.  The final step is to add decoration to the cake.  The little kids tend to like simple sprinkles, where the older kids add more elaborate flower petals.  The kids come up with some pretty fabulous ideas.  When the cake is finished an adult can slice a piece with an exacto knife.  If you use a dull knife, like a butter knife, it will not come out clean, like you see here, but it will still look cool.  It’s more of a marbled affect.  Some kids prefer it.  Get ready to hear some serious oohs and ahhs.

We’ve turned some of our cakes into necklace pendants and even earrings.  You can find all the necessary hardware at Michaels.  Mostly, the kids just love to make cake after cake for a collection.  I can’t say I blame them.  They are so darn pretty!  Happy cake making!