DIY White & Gold Ring Dish

I’m usually very good with having birthday gifts ready in advance, but this year I just couldn’t figure out what to get my mom for her birthday. Parents literally have everything they need, so I always find it a bit challenging to buy them things. So I had been sitting at my desk the past couple weeks, doing nothing as per usual, and then yesterday it just hit me that she loves a certain tea from David’s tea. I was happy that I had finally thought of something, but still wanted to make her another little thing that was more personal.I remember I had suggested to Tasha that she make our friend who is married a ring dish for her to safely store her rings if she ever needed to take them off.

I realized then that this would also be a good gift for my mom, because she usually takes her rings off when she gardens or does some baking, but she always just leaves them on the window ledge in the kitchen.  I thought a ring dish would be a safer way to store them, and would also be much cuter because I was planning on finding a little animal figure to glue in the middle for the rings to hang on.

My mom loves giraffes, so I went in search of a small plastic one for the middle thinking I could hang the rings around the long neck. I ended up finding small plastic animals at the De Serres close to my work, but unfortunately the ears on the giraffe were too big for my moms size 3 rings to fit over. I decided to go with plan B and get her a cat instead, because she just fawns over her cat all the time (he is after all “SOO smart”). At that point I had thought about buying a plain white plate from the dollar store, but then it hit me that I could make a nicer dish if I just bought white clay and baked it! It would also be a matte white, instead of shiny, which I thought would work better with my more matte gold spray paint.  The plan was to spray the cat and the underside of the dish gold with the top of the dish remaining white.Finally I had a clear picture of the project in mind!

Supplies (Makes 1 Ring Dish):

• 1 package white oven baked clay* ( I used Sculpey)
• gold spray paint (or any colour of your choosing)
• a plastic animal figure
• an exacto knife
• a rubber mat or clean surface for rolling the clay on
• a rolling pin (I used my fondant rolling pin, which worked really well)
• super glue
• a small circular bowl or cutter the size you want your dish to be for
• an oven safe bowl for baking your clay in
• sandpaper or a nail file (optional)

* I made 1 dish and had some extra left over, but you could probably get two smaller dishes out of the 1 package of clay

Sev was clearly very eager to help.

I started by cleaning my rubber cutting mat to make sure that nothing would stain my white clay.

Next, I started shaping the clay into a disk so that I could roll it out. With the white clay, try to make sure that there are no hairs or fibres near you. I know it’s hard, but they somehow found their way right into my clay and I had to keep picking them out with the exacto knife and rolling over the clay to get rid of the indents.

Once your clay is your desired diameter (mine measured 4 3/8″) I took a small bowl, inverted it over the top and cut around the bowl to get the shape for my dish. I then cleaned up the edges a bit with the exacto knife and laid it in the bottom of my oven safe bowl. I made sure that it curved up at the sides a bit, and that the bottom was flat enough for the cat to sit level.

I then baked the clay in the bowl at 275 °F for 18 minutes and allowed it to cool before sanding the edges. I just used a nail file to sand any rough edges of my dish to give it a bit more of a polished look.

After I was happy with how it looked, I took it outside to spray paint the underside of the dish and the entire cat. I ended up having to do 3 coats on the cat just to make sure every nook and cranny was covered. I only had to do 2 coats on the underside of the dish.

After everything was dry I found the middle of my ring dish, put a tiny dot of super glue under each of the paws, and glued the cat down to the dish.

It probably only took me about half an hour to do, and I think the result is really cute! It’s a nice gift to make for someone because you can personalize it to match the decor in their house, or pick their favourite animal (or landmark etc). I think it’s also great that it’s not ceramic like a lot of ring dishes that I’ve seen, that way it won’t break if it falls (my mom’s cat has an affinity for batting things off of any surface he can get his paws on).

I think my mom will really like it! Let me know what you think, or what animal you would choose for your ring dish 🙂

xo, tess.