Provide teenage patrons with simple clay crafting supplies, fake teeth and eyeballs. See what unholy creatures they make.
Advanced Planning
This program was born from a horrifying discovery: you can buy fake human teeth on Amazon for relatively cheap. Everything after that was simple.
Steps:
- Purchase air dry clay, fake human teeth, and plastic half eyes.
- Borrow lunch trays from another program so the teens can sculpt their clay on them.
- Soften air dry clay by spritzing it with water a couple of days in advance of the event.
- Have paper plates and plastic wrap on standby for people to transport their art home.
- Peel the individual teeth off their little strips of paper so that nobody grabs a whole set of teeth in one go.
Marketing
This was part of our weekly Teen Time event series, so it was easy to build into our regularly recurring programs. We advertised it on our online Event Calendar, and I put it on one of our editable Teen Time flyers, where we can put in days and times. I also told the regularly attending Teen Time teens about it in the upcoming weeks.
Budgeting
The cost of the program was approximately $45 to purchase air-dry clay, fake human teeth, and fake eyeballs.
Cost-cutting-wise, I could have limited the amount of supplies everyone used, more. I could have purchased less clay overall and prepackaged it into individual portions. I could have given everyone a set number of eyes and teeth to work with. For my part, I had another upcoming creepy craft coming up, and I knew we could use any leftover eyes and teeth for it, so the cost was spread over multiple events.
Day-of-event Activity
On the day, only one staff member was needed. It took me approximately ten minutes to set up the supplies and tables.
One challenge I was not prepared for was the number of teens who chose to leave their art pieces at the library for later pickup. For a messier activity like this, where drying can take a while, I try to offer that when I can, but it was more than I comfortably had room for. I would say either plan to insist that teens take them home or come up with a game plan in advance to have people pick them up later (collect phone numbers, etc.).
Program Execution
We had 12 attendees, which is solid attendance for our teen program.
Teens loved it. The open-ended nature of the clay allowed them to be creative and make whatever they wanted, but almost all of them used the eyes and teeth in their creations. The novelty of the fake human teeth delighted them, and they proudly told me later about how their parents had thought their art was super creepy.
Advice
Consider offering open-ended art that has a novel or unusual object, like fake human teeth, in it.
Have a handwashing station available if at all possible when working with clay. We made do with paper towels to clean the clay off people's hands, but I wish I had done this activity in a space with a sink.
Supporting Materials
Slideshow Images
More Programs
Dragon Eggs
Audiences:
Doll Head Cameo Necklace
Audiences:
