My mother loves to shop and she is always finding clever gifts to please her kids. Awhile back, she sent me a couple of hanging garden tags that were both attractive and funny. They were made of resin and graced with clever sayings. One said, “Pick Me and You’re Mulch” and the other said, “ I Grow, Therefore I Am”.

I love those tags and they have their place of honor in my garden to this day. But my plants have a lot more they want to say. I had to figure out how to make some custom tags so they can express themselves. Your plants may need some too!
You might use these tags to remind yourself where a pot of flowers must go to meet its light requirements - like Full Sun for example, or you could just express your sense of humor (or your plant’s witty personality. Once you get started with these, it will be very hard to stop thinking of ideas to express this way.

Materials and Supplies:
If you’re going to put these outside, or where water might hit them, they need to be pretty indestructible. Ceramic clay is a possibility if you have a kiln, but most of us don’t. So, we decided to use polymer clay and Cre8it’s High Desert PolyGlaze to give it the look of ceramic.

Light colored or white clay works best with the glaze, so here is some info about the available choices:

The Polymer Clay:
The inexpensive white Sculpey that comes in a box is one choice. Positive points are that it is inexpensive (and you need quite a bit for this project), it is soft and easy to condition, and it has a nice matte finish which works well with the glaze. In fact, our PolyGlaze was originally formulated for use with this Sculpey. The downside is strength. While this thickness of tile makes it relatively strong, it will break if it falls on a hard surface or if you try to snap it in half.

Premo (or other high end brands) are flexible and unbreakable, but there are three other things to consider. The cost is higher because this clay comes in small packages, it is harder out of the package and more difficult to condition, and the surface when baked is semi glossy - more plastic like, and the glaze may bead up on the smooth surfaces, although it will sit in the indented letters and designs very nicely. A slight sanding of the smooth, flat parts of the tile will remedy this.

Sculpey Ultra-Light is a brand new light weight white clay that was announced at CHA in February. Get in touch with The Clay Factory (http://www.clayfactoryinc.com) or Google it to find online sources.

We used it for this project, and despite some hinky points, we love it. It comes in a big package, is inexpensive, and comes out of the package soft and squishy. It has an almost powdery feel to the surface both before and after baking (like a marshmallow) and takes paints and glazes very well.

After baking, it is amazingly lightweight and flexible. But you must bake it longer and at a higher temperature than the package says or it's not flexible at all - it just breaks!

But, if baked for 30-35 minutes at a temperature anywhere between 275º and 290º, and allowed to cool completely, an 1/8" thick piece will bend into a taco shape without breaking. However, you can still tear it into pieces - which we find really bizaare but not without creative possibilities. It is great for use with paper crafts because you can easily cut it and punch it. We will be doing a lot more exploring with this stuff! But, for now, we love how it works with our glazes!