This is an easy plaster craft for kids or adults to make at home, and to either keep or give as a gift. You can make these dishes large or small, and they can be painted or covered in fabric or paper to embellish them. It’s a fun DIY craft that also gives you a useful product.
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Materials you’ll need.
For this trinket dish, I used a roll of Plaster of Paris cotton that has the plaster infused in it already. It’s easy to use because you just have to dip it in warm water and you don’t have to deal with dipping the fabric into the plaster separately.
It comes wrapped in a plastic bag because that keeps the moisture out of it. You just have to be careful not to get it wet before you want it to be wet, because that will dampen the plaster and it will harden after it gets wet.
For the thing I was molding, I used a little plastic container, because the Plaster of Paris will not stick to the plastic since it’s non-porous. If you’re using something as a form, which is what I was using this for, you definitely don’t want to have it be a porous material because the plaster will stick to it and you might have trouble removing it from the form.
Use a bowl for the water that isn’t too small so that you can dip the entire piece of wrap into the bowl to get it wet.
How to use the strips.
Cut some pieces of the plaster wrap, either measuring it or just using the general “eyeball” method. (I just eyeballed it.) You can use small pieces and overlap them, so if something is too long or short that’s fine at this point.
To activate the plaster, just put the strip in some warm water and rub the strip gently to spread the plaster evenly on the cotton mesh. It will turn kind of milky and spread over the cotton wrap as the plaster absorbs the water. Spread it with your fingers and put the fabric onto the form that you’re using, spreading it out as evenly as you can.
This is messy, so if you have little kids and you’re going to be doing this, just make sure that they have supervision. And you might want to do this outside because whatever the plaster gets on it can stick to and it might ruin the surface. Don’t do this with carpeting underneath you, for example! Make sure that you have some kind of a surface that you can clean afterwards.
Layer the strips.
Place the wet strips on the form, and smooth them out as well as you can. The more you’re able to rub the plaster into the holes in the mesh, the smoother the final piece will be. The strips will dry in whatever shape you put them in, so try to get them as smooth as you can while the strips are wet.
If you can make the plaster as smooth as possible as you’re working it while it’s wet, then it will give you a very smooth surface when it’s dry. And I was surprised at how smooth the surface was that this came off of this plastic container. I thought it was going to be a lot bumpier, but I think that it just depends on how well you smooth it out to begin with.
As you’re working this, try to overlap everything to form a continuous sheet of the plaster strips. Smooth the edges down and smooth it with your fingers to make sure that the plaster is filling all of the holes. If you can see the holes in the fabric, then you want to try to fill that in with extra plaster that’s on your fingers or at the bottom of the water bowl.
I went ahead and covered this whole thing. I cut out a whole bunch of strips, and I wrapped them all the way up to the edge of the container. I tried to get it as smooth as I could, because the more evenly you can get this on to begin with, the better it’s going to dry and the more solid it’s going to be when it dries.
You can do multiple layers of the wrap to make the final piece stronger. I also took one long strip and wrapped it all the way around the edge and tried to get that top pretty level because it’s better to get it as good as you can get it before it dries so that you don’t have to work the final piece a lot.
It also works pretty well to dip your fingers into the water and use them to smooth out the plaster if you need some extra moisture.
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Let the plaster dry.
I left the covered form to dry for a couple of hours. It says it dries in about 15 minutes, which is true. But because I was removing it from a form, I wanted it to be really dry.
I removed it from the form by bending the plastic to see if it came off without sticking, and it slid right off. If it feels cold, then it still has moisture in it and it’s in the process of drying, but it came off very easily from the form.
After letting it dry overnight, it was hard as a rock. I was really surprised at how strong it was, to be honest. Now, if I really tried, I was able to bend one side a little bit. So, if you want to go around this a few times with additional plaster strips it’s going to make it stronger.
This worked really well to create the dish, and I would say that it’s definitely a good medium to use. It made it a lot easier to have the cloth strips with the plaster in it and I didn’t have to mess with separate strips and cutting those and dipping in the plaster and the whole thing, and it just speeds the process up a lot. But it is messy and it’s something that little kids are going to have to have help with. But it does make a very hard surface and if you layer multiple layers it’s going to make it even harder.
How to clean up!
As you’re cleaning this up, you want to make sure that you’re not washing a lot of plaster down your sink. Make sure that you are throwing this out somewhere, maybe outside where it’s not going to go down your sink, because this can clog up your drain if you have too much wet plaster going down the pipes. That’s not a good thing.
Let everything dry out and then peel and rub the dried plaster off of your tools and, put it in the garbage. As long as you’re using non-porous tools it will be pretty easy to get off of them, and you won’t have to put anything in the sink at all.
Watch the video of the making-the-dish process:
Trim the edges.
Trim the edges of the dish carefully to remove any strings from the plaster wrap and even it out. Just do a little at a time and it won’t crack.
I left the edge raw in this project, but if you want to cover the edge after painting the dish it will make it look more finished. You could use washi tape or fabric bias tape or seam binding, or just take a strip of paper to fold over the edge. You’ll need to paint it first them glue on the thing you’re going to cover the edge with, but that should be the last step!
Paint the dish.
To paint this dish I used Decoart Texture paint. It’s really thick, and it’s smooth but it will stand up and fill in any holes or gaps in the plaster. It doesn’t need to be put on to create texture, so you can use it even if you want a smooth surface.
Click here to see my list of supplies on Amazon that I used to make this project (affiliate link)
I painted the inside with Pewter Decoart Texture paint, and it was a really pretty color. It’s a lot more blue than it looks in this picture, it was almost a Payne’s Grey color, which is one of my favorites. You can use any kind of paint that you want to use for this, but I found that the thicker paint covered up a lot of the texture of the plaster, which was good.
Paint the interior of the dish and let it dry completely. I let it sit for a few hours, but it should dry completely in about half an hour, depending on how thick you put the paint on.
Once the inside is dry, paint the outside of the dish. This side should be rougher than the inside because the inside is the part that was right up against the dish that you used to mold it.
The outside might be bumpy in spots, so painting a little thicker layer of paint over it can help to smooth it out. You’ll need to leave it to dry longer, though, so give this step some time before you go on to the next step.
When the dish is dry, you can finish the edge however you want to. I just painted a little stripe around the top using silver metallic Decoart paint, but if you want to completely cover up the rough edge, gluing something over the edge that will create a covered edge would be your next step. Washi tape, folded fabric, or folded paper would all work.
If you do finish the top edge, glue whatever you’re attaching to the dish to the outside edge first, then fold it over to the inside. If you attach it to the inside first you’ll have more trouble folding it over to the outside of the dish, and if you’re using paper it could rip.
Make the liner.
If you want to make a liner for your dish, get some fabric and trace around the bottom of the dish to make the template.
Trim the fabric to size, then put it inside the dish to make sure you don’t need to trim it a little more. Once it’s the right fit for the dish, add the glue.
I used regular Elmer’s glue for this, there’s no reason to use anything stronger if you’re just gluing fabric to paint. Put a bunch of it on the inside bottom of the dish. (To read about craft glue in general click here)
Spread the glue out with your finger to make an even layer (Elmer’s glue is water-soluble and non-toxic so I could do that.)
Put the liner in the dish and press it down to stick it to the glue. You can use any kind of fabric, felt, or paper for this. I had some faux leather so I used that.
The finished dish.
The finished dish is cute for a desk accessory or a dish to throw your keys into. You could paint an additional design onto the outside of the dish, or use paint pens or black Sharpies to draw on it.
You could definitely finish the top edge to make it look neater, but this one is for my own use and it doesn’t bother me! If you want to make these with your kids for them to give as gifts, you might want to take the extra step to have them finish off the edge, though. They can also add a little color or pattern by doing that and using a piece of seam binding or bias tape with a colorful pattern.
Watch the video of painting the dish:
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