Dirty Clay Series Part 2: Cover Up (Sushi tutorial)

So now that you have a bunch of really old, dirty clay... What to do?

How about sushi? Sushi is one of the easiest things that you can make with dirty clay with very little effort. Of course, this works best with dirty white clay. I will let you in on what to do with the other colors later.

Step 1: Here we have a pile of dirty, old, dusty clay. This pile is off-white, covered with lint, and even has some green in it from another project. Basically, this is the clay that I got from the bottom of the pasta machine.

Step 2: Knead this clay until it is workable. In our example, I knead this until I get little ovals of clay that are 1/4" (6mm) long and 3/16" (~2-3mm) wide.

Step 3: Knead some clean, white clay (without dust) and extrude it with a clay extruder on the disc with the smallest holes to get these long noodles. Bake these according to the directions of the polymer clay that you have.

Step 4: After baking, use a small razor blade to chop the clay into smaller, thin "rice" pieces. Put this aside in a container when you have a nice little pile.

Step 5: Roll around the little balls of rice in the field of chopped rice that you just made. Bake these again according to the directions of the polymer clay that you have.

Step 6: There! Now we have sushi rice nigiri balls! Now, you can expand this of course to maki rolls and other things. In my sample, there are some egg (darker yellow), squid (pure translucent), and salmon (orange translucent + white sandwich, squish, stach until desired layers, cool, and cut). Then bake the clay on with these new toppings on according to the directions of the polymer clay that you have. You can glaze them with some matte or gloss glaze if you wish, but those are unglazed.

Optional Rice balls: Of course, it does not have to end with just sushi pieces. We can also have mini rice balls too. The Japanese would eat rice balls as a snack or as a lunch item.

Step 1: To make these, condition and shape some old clay in 1/8" (6mm at the widest base) triangles. Cover these with rice using the same technique as the rice balls above. This time: Do not bake these yet!

Step 2: You can make some nori (seaweed paper) by getting some parchment paper and painting them dark green on both sides with different layers of stroke patterns. It takes a while for it to dry, but the results are worth it.

Step 3: To decorate these rice balls afterwards, you can put some of the more traditional Japanese rice ball toppings like dried plum (ume) pieces. You roll a dark red ball around, roll it around some rough sandpaper, and then gently stick it on a rice ball with some translucent liquid sculpey. If the plum no longer look as "wrinkled", then gently dab the clay on the rice ball.

You can also attach a small strip of the seaweed paper you made as well with translucent liquid sculpey just fine or leave it plain.

I hope you like this tutorial!