Making Your Own Crystal Shards

Sarah here.  Deviating from our normal blog updates I wanted to make a post about crystals.  The next Tales of 13th Age adventure, Wyrd of the Wild Wood, includes a lot of them.  Since Ben and I enjoy painting miniatures I wanted to have some crystal terrain present for our first game.  Thinking I was clever I ran out to a local craft store first thing Monday morning and bought several packets of grow your own space age crystal kits.  The powder ones that you mixed with boiling water as a kid and watched crystals grow in front of your eyes.  I rushed back home, boiled some water, followed the directions and set it aside in a plastic container for a week.  Today after I came home from work I came home to….. no crystals.  Apparently only kids get the magic growing crystals.  Adults get a giant color dye mess and stained plastic containers.  Ben, who never knew the joy of growing crystals as a kid, looked at me like I was crazy.

So…. I went to Plan B.  Plan B involved running out to a different craft store and coming back tonight with Fimo.  Fimo is a sculpting  polymer clay.  Now I suppose I should put a disclaimer here.  Not counting play-dough, the last time I worked with sculpting clay I was in sixth grade.  I made a teddy bear.  That is the extent of my sculpting skills.  Got it? Okay. Moving on.

How to Make Your Own Crystal Shards

Step 1. Buy some sculpting clay.  For this project I will be using the purple one shown here because it’s sparkly.  Crystal sparkle = good.  Vampire sparkle = bad.

Step 2. Slap the clay together in rough crystal shapes.  If you are feeling fancy use a straight edge or mold.  Bake at 230°F for 15 minutes to harden slightly.

Step 3. Cut facets into clay using a sharp tool such as a X-Acto knife.  Save the scraps.

Step 4.  Kitty break!  Everyone say hi to our cat Daniel.

Step 5. Using some more clay as a base assemble all your crystal shard pieces using whatever pattern you like.  I went to a tilt rather than star-burst.  Did you save your scraps from earlier?  Good.  Slap them onto the base to cover up that messy base job.  It’ll look like you actually spent time sculpting tiny little shards into the base.  Don’t you look clever?

Step 6.  Back in the oven!  Bake at 230°F for 30 minutes.

Step 7.  Base.  Viola!  You have yourself a nifty little crystal shard.

UPDATE! Step 8. Repeat steps 1 through 7 with as many color variations as desired.  Then hide a crystal golem in the midst.  Your party won’t know what hit them.

A block of Fimo clay costs about $2.80.  I used a quarter of a block for each crystal shard.  Not bad for 70¢.  Considering I had no idea what I was doing I’m sure your crystal shards will look even more fantastic! If you’re really feeling ambitious do this with white clay, prime, then paint.  Hope you enjoyed this little post!  😉

Next time I do a craft post I’ll show you how to make a potted plant monster with these little cute tiny terracotta pots.

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