MEASURING TAPE SNAILS 💛 Lucky Mary Sunshine

Have you ever heard of a Measuring Tape Snail?! Well, now is your chance to see one in real life! These magnificent creatures have tape measures built right into their shells. This makes them perfect companions for any little one learning about units of measure. Seriously…what kid doesn’t want an adorable pet to help them with their homework? I came up with these guys when Mighty was first learning about units of measure in school. I had some retractable tape measures laying around and Mighty told me they looked like snail shells…soooo, of course we needed to turn them into actual snails! These were a lot of fun to make and definitely made math homework a bit more fun for awhile. (P.S. They also make great gifts for your kiddos’ favorite teacher or crafter!) Let’s get started!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

Crayola Model Magic (or any other air-dry clay)
retractable sewing measuring tape (I used these)
a pipe cleaner
paint and paintbrushes (you can also use markers)
googly eyes
puff paint, jewel stickers, etc. to decorate (optional)
free printable worksheets (optional)
you can also grab our craft kit with everything you need plus a free surprise right here)

Heads up! – there may be affiliate links sprinkled throughout this post. That means if you make a purchase through one of those links, I’ll earn a little coffee money (which I promise to use to fuel more awesome ideas to share with you!) It costs nothing extra for you, so click away, my friend!

LET’S CREATE!

1. Take a large handful of your clay and roll it into a “snake”. The snake should be about 1.5 inches wide and 6 inches long. You can use your tape measure to make sure it is about the right size.

2. Place your tape measure in the middle of your clay “snake” and gently press it into the clay. Make sure that the tab (the part you pull out of the tape measure) is near the base, but still able to be pulled out. On the side that the tape measure will be pulled, form your clay into a fat point to create the snail’s tail. The other side of the clay tube will form the snail’s body and head. Continue to gently form the clay along the side of the tape measure. Form a head by bending the clay away from the tape measure close to the top. (That part is hard for me to put into words, but much easier to do than it sounds! ) Check out the pictures below and remember that you can reform the clay and start again if you need to.

3. Press a googly eye into each side of the snail’ s head. If you don’t want to use googly eyes, skip this step and draw your eyes on once the clay has dried.

4. Cut your pipe cleaner so that you have two 4 inch lengths. Push the pipe cleaner into the top of the head. Curl the top of the pipe cleaner to form the antenna. Repeat with the other pipe cleaner. You can leave the pipe cleaners in or take them out to make it a bit easier to paint later. They will slide right back in once dry.

5. Now… this is the hard part! Let your snail air dry for at least 24 hours. It helps to prop the snail’s head against a wall or something so it doesn’t droop as it dries. I put ours on a shelf with the snail’s nose against the wall.

6. Once the clay is dry, it’s time to paint! Paint your snail any color you’d like. You can add stripes, polka dots, hearts, anything! Once the paint is dry you can glue other decorations on if you’d like. Max glued googly eyes ALL over his! Model magic also does great with markers or chalk crayons if you want to keep it a little more mess free.

7. Now that you’ve decorated your snail, it’s time to give them a name and take them on lots of adventures!

We’ve made MANY snails now, but our favorite one was named Peppy! He went on loads of adventures with us, including to the beach (which I would NOT recommend!) These snails are not meant for the water, but if you love snails AND the beach you should definitely check out our amazing Surfing Snail craft.