Make This: Crafting Festive Clay Drink Stirrers for Summer Parties + Beyond

Today, I’m excited to be partnering with CreativeLive one more time (see the first set of DIYs here) to put together the last set of summer entertaining DIYs.

The first of the two is this clay drink stirrers DIY. I really love these…They’re easy, look cool, and have some practicality to them as well for stirring drinks (or does everyone just use drink stirrers as decoration?).

And the second project can be found over on CreativeLive –, for a colorful DIY summer tray. Peek at that project in the image below, in all of it’s green glory.

I was inspired by one of my favorite necklaces that I bought from Poketo a while back, by Emily Green. She creates these crazy awesome necklaces with big, colorful clay beads. They’re super fun.

So, I thought, why not translate that playful vibe into summer drink stirrers. I love playing around with clay anyway, and it gave me an excuse to buy this clay sampler pack (it has 30 different colors of clay) too. Win-win!

Want to make your own clay drink stirrers? Here’s how…

Supplies:

oven bake clay in various colors (I bought mine from Amazon)// drinks stirrers (these are the ones I used) // bamboo skewer // glue

How-To:

1. Break off small chunks of clay (anywhere from 1/2 inch to 1 inch in size) and form round balls in the palms of your hands.

2. Next, create a hole large enough to fit onto the drink stirrer (the ones I used are a little bit thick) through the center of each ball. You can do this by poking a bamboo skewer through each ball and then wiggling it around to make the hole larger. Or you can use a leftover drink stirrer to poke through the clay balls instead. Either way, it’s super easy.

3. Once the balls have been formed and the center holes have been created, you can change the form of these beads to something more oval or square shaped if you prefer. Squish the clay together more for a squatty oval shape. Or press a round bead against a hard service and rotate to create a more squared-off shape.

4. Next, it’s time to add designs to the clay beads. Using a bamboo skewer you can create all the designs that you see in the photos – small stipples, larger indented polka dots, small hash marks, etc.

5. Once the designs are done, bake the clay pieces in the oven according to the instructions on the clay packaging.

6. Once the clay has baked and cooled, attach the beads to drink stirrers with glue. Let them dry completely and enjoy.

I was thinking about creating a new set of these for each season. Each in a different season-specific color scheme, since they’re so easy. One set for summer, one for fall, one for winter, one for spring. What do you think?

And if drink stirrers aren’t your thing, you could easily modify this tutorial and make cool wine markers instead…or reusable cupcake toppers.

Concept, photography, and styling by Brittni Mehlhoff

How do you celebrate summer? Any tips, tricks, or DIY ideas you want to share? Let me know in the comments below. And be sure to visit CreativeLive for the corresponding DIY tutorial to todays post: how to transform a store bought serving tray.

P.S. You may recognize those DIY watercolor in the photos from this tutorial I shared a couple of weeks ago.