Polymer Clay Ice Cream Tutorial - Make Ice Cream with Papa's Clay

Here's what you will need to get started:

• Ochre polymer clay
• Chocolate Brown polymer clay
• Foil
• Circle cutter or bottle cap
• Pasta machine or roller

Step 1 - Condition the Clay

Papa's Clay conditions differently than other types of clay. It just needs some gentle rolling and heat from your hands. Make sure to condition your clay before you start working with it. Small pieces take just a few seconds to condition and big pieces can take up to a minute or two. You can use a hair dryer to condition it even quicker.

Step 2 - Make your waffle cone rolling tool

When people roll waffle cones, they use a cone shaped tool to roll the waffle around to give it that cone shape. We’re going to make our own cone tool out of foil.

Grab some foil and make a pointy cone like the ones below.

Step 3 - Cut out your polymer clay waffle cone

Take your ocher polymer clay and get it nice and conditioned. Run it through your pasta machine at a medium setting to get it pretty thin.

If you have some circle cutters those work great, but things you have around the house work great too. For example, you can use a bottle cap.

If you have any tools with this type of grip, roll it over your clay to give it some texture. If you don’t have a tool like this, you can make your own texture stamp really easily with clay.

Ocher is the perfect color for waffle cones, but, if you have some dark and light brown chalk pastels, you could lightly brush those on to your clay to give it some additional color pop.

Step 4 - Wrap your polymer clay waffle cone around the foil tool

Take the piece of foil that you made earlier and your clay and gently wrap the clay around the foil. 

Leave your waffle cone on your foil so you can bake it and it doesn't get messed up and any next steps. Put the waffle cone on top of a mound of baking soda or cornstarch so that it doesn't get ruined while baking.

Step 5 - Make some ice cream out of polymer clay

Take your chocolate brown polymer clay and get it nice and conditioned and soft. This step is pretty easy, but it just does take a bit of practice to get the hang of it, gently needed into the shape of a ball. 

Very slowly and carefully, use your thumbs to pull the clay apart and back. you'll start to get this tear-like texture that looks just like ice cream. Keep on pulling it back into the shape of a ball or sphere

so that it looks like a scoop of ice cream.

It might take a bit of practice to get used to this technique. As you pull the clay back, you’ll start to get a point on the bottom along with excess clay which you can use to hold on to the ice cream scoop without ruining the texture.

Bake your ice cream scoop on top of a pile of cornstarch or baking soda so that it does not get ruined while you bake it.

Step 6 - Combine your polymer clay ice cream and polymer clay waffle cone

After everything is baked and cooled off, put a little of extra chocolate brown clay into your waffle cone to fill in any empty space. Then add your ice cream scoop on top of that with a little glue if necessary.

And now you’ve got a realistic ice cream scoop and waffle cone. You can experiment with sizes and colors to get your favorite ice cream flavors.

Check out the video tutorial here: