Miniature polymer clay giraffes can be used in jewellery or as a super cute teeny ornament. They’re easy to make, and because a giraffe’s pattern and shape is so distinctive, you can be more creative with the style of giraffe you make and it will still be recognisable as a giraffe!
I used Sculpey Premo in Ecru to make the giraffe’s body and painted the features and pattern on with black and burnt sienna acrylic paint. I moulded the shape of the giraffe in three parts – the body, neck and head and blended the seams together with a silicone tool.
I then made the ears, ossicones (horn-like things!) and tail and blended these onto the giraffe. After baking the giraffe, I used a ball tool to add dots of black paint for the eyes and nostrils and burnt sienna for the pattern.
Below you can find out more detail about I made a polymer clay giraffe.
Step 1 – Make the body
I used Sculpey Premo in Ecru to make the giraffe, but any colour from beige to yellow will work, depending on how realistic you want your giraffe to look.
I took a piece of clay about the size of a broad bean and warmed this in my hands before shaping it into a a cone shape. Once I was happy with the shape, I used a silicone tool on the bottom of the giraffe body to make four indents – this created the legs. If you wanted to, you could make the legs using four small balls of polymer clay and blending these to the giraffe’s body.
Step 2 – Make the neck and head
I originally intended to make the neck out of the same piece of clay as the body, but it was too difficult to stretch the clay out and maintain the shape of the giraffe’s body. Instead, I too a piece of clay about a third of the size of the piece I used for the giraffe’s body and rolled this out into a cylinder to create the neck. I then used a silicone tool to blend this into the body.
For the head, I took a slightly small piece of polymer clay and rolled this into a head-shape and blended it onto the body with a silicone tool. I used a ball tool to add two indents for the nostrils.
Step 3 – Make the ears, ossicones and tail
Next, I took two very small balls of polymer clay and made triangle shapes with these for the ears, using a small ball tool to create the indent in the ear. I rolled out a small piece of polymer clay for the tail and two more very short pieces for the ossicones (the official word for the horn-like things on a giraffe’s head!). I finished the ossicones off with two small balls of clay.
Step 4 -Bake the giraffe
I baked the giraffe model in the oven for 30 minutes at 130° and let it cool completely before painting it.
Step 5 – Paint the giraffe
I used burnt sienna acrylic paint to paint on the giraffes spots and nostrils and used black acrylic paint for the eyes. I used a ball tool, rather than a brush, to apply paint to the model. Getting the eyes in the right spot took quite a few attempts. I originally planned to add a couple of white spots to the eyes to create kawaii style eyes, but given the trouble I had just painting the black on, I didn’t feel brave enough!
So here’s my finished polymer clay giraffe. It’s not perfect, but for a first attempt at making an animal out of clay (in at least 30 years!), I’m happy with this little guy.
What went wrong?
Although I’m happy with this model overall, there are a few things I would do differently next time:
- Clean my tools and work surface – I wore a fluffy cardigan when I made this giraffe and the fluff got on my tools, work surface and clay. I should have cleaned my tools and work surface more regularly with a wet wipe to avoid the fuzzy finished look.
- Make indents for the eyes – the giraffes eyes look a little flat, so if I was to make this again, I’d use a ball tool to make little indents for the eyes before painting them once it’s been baked.
- Use brown clay for the ossicones – I’m not sure why but I thought it would be easier to paint the ecru clay brown rather than making the ossicones out of brown clay in the first place. As the model is so small, the painting got a little fiddly and it would have been much easier to just use brown clay for this part instead.
Polymer Clay Giraffe Tutorials
If you want more step-by-step guides to making a giraffe out of polymer clay, then I’ve scoured YouTube and found these super cute, and super fun, step by step tutorials.
Kawaii polymer clay giraffe
Kawaii is the Japanese culture of celebrating all things cute, with the iconic Hello Kitty cat being the first and arguably most famous kawaii characters. There are tonnes of polymer clay tutorials to create kawaii models or jewellery, including miniature food, animals and every day objects. When it comes to kawaii giraffes, I love this tutorial by aCupOfCakeTV. She uses pale yellow polymer clay to model the shape of the giraffe and acrylic paint to add the kawaii features.
Easy polymer clay giraffe
The giraffe in this tutorial looks more like the one I made. I used a silicone tool to create the legs of my giraffe but now I wish I’d used a knife like this crafter as it looks much easier and has a far better end result. I used the same coloured clay as the giraffe’s body for the ossicones but this modeller used brown clay, which is probably easier than painting the clay brown afterwards.
For the giraffe tutorial, skip to 4:46 in the video.
Realistic polymer clay giraffe
This isn’t a tutorial as such, but it does give you an idea of the techniques used for crafting larger, more realistic giraffes. In this video, the modeller uses armature to create the giraffe’s body – this is a great idea for not only ensuring that the delicate neck is strong and supported, but also for using less clay. The other interesting difference between this and the simpler kawaii giraffes is that she sculpts the head by adding pieces of clay to it to create the shape, rather than just modelling the details out of one piece of clay.
Skip to 0:37 to see the head being made.