These garden snails are super cute, easy to make with toddlers and would make a sweet little Father’s Day gift. They could find a home on Daddy’s desk, or in the garden – I’m planning to put mine in the garden but can’t vouch for how they will withstand the weather. I don’t expect they will last forever!
Can you tell what these are made of? Well, I began by googling ‘what crafts can you do with dried pasta’ and ‘dried pasta crafts’. As this was for Daddy the easiest option of a pasta necklace wasn’t suitable, but there are loads of other things you can make. I found this picture of little snails and really liked it, so decided to have a go.
I had some air dry clay open from about a year ago which surprisingly was still perfectly fine to use but if you like you can use plasticine or play doh for the bodies – obviously if you do, they won’t set hard so you need to be careful what you do with them.
I bought some giant pasta shells – conchiglie- and we began by painting a few pieces in different colours and leaving them to dry.
Next we rolled clay into sausage shapes and carefully stuck it into the pasta shells, using the tip of the shell at each end to anchor the clay. My daughter needed a little help rolling the sausage shapes but enjoyed doing this.
I used the lid of a biro to make eyes and a mouth and decided the snails did need antennae; you need to be careful with this and it’s not a good idea for very young children. I used some wire food bag ties, stripping off the paper coating and cutting the wire into two. I rolled the ends and inserted the wire into the snails’ heads.
Leave the clay to dry overnight and hey presto – you have your own little family of snails!
Mini Moo Life 
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